oil & gas – the _

[3019] Tracing the Middle East energy flows disruption throughout the Malaysian economy

I am worried at the way the Malaysian government is handling the supply crisis emanating from the latest war in the Middle East.

Complacency

While neighboring economies have quickly engaged in some kind of mitigating measures, Malaysia appears to be carrying on with business as usual. The latest business-as-usual approach the government has taken is to provide and finance highway toll discounts for the upcoming Eid holidays, which will work to raise petrol and diesel consumption above what it would have been without discount. The subsidy regime has also left unchanged, taking any possible adaptive saving measure out of the equation. Decision on work-from-home arrangement would only be taken after Eid.

It seems the government is complacent. After all, the official communication designed to comfort Malaysians is that Malaysia is a net energy exporter and that the country has two-month’s worth of supply of petroleum products at home. Adding to this is the fact that Malaysia is one of the better prepared economies to weather the supply disruption storm.

Negative effects are unavoidable

Yet, the negative effects are a matter of when, not if.

This is so because many of the industrial (indeed petroleum) products used within Malaysia are exposed to international trade. At the very least, domestic prices are affected by global prices, even if the country is self-sufficient in one specific sector or the other. That is one of the fundamental facts for a small open economy such as Malaysia. Within context of the latest supply disruption, it means domestic prices should go up tracking global prices. This has not taken into account the problem with smuggling, which is really a feature (and not a bug as some would think) of the way Malaysia set prices for its petroleum products.

Qualitatively tracing the disruption ripples with an IO table

To understand the seriousness of the supply disruption, the ripples throughout the domestic economy could be traced through the input-output table. The table links every sector with each other by accounting for all output for all sectors as well as its input from domestic and foreign sources. The latest IO table Malaysia has is from 2021, with the next one due to be published likely this year.

O&G disruption

The clearest channel to trace that disruption is to trace the industrial linkage between oil and gas to chemicals and from there on, to other downstream sectors that use energy and chemical inputs. The chart below is a graphical representation of that linkage within the context of domestic output use (with international trade taken into account).

Here, the output of oil and gas has been traced down by five levels, i.e. from oil and gas, to refined petroleum, to basic chemicals, to special chemicals and then to the next stream user sectors that among others include pharmaceuticals (as listed in the chart).^[1]

While five levels may appear deep, it is possible to drill down deeper and trace all the IO table and hence, the whole economy. For instance, a sector located downstream of pharmaceuticals includes the healthcare sector and healthcare output would be used by other services, like banking or even electricity manufacturing. Or for electricity, it could go down to land transport and then to other activities dependent on land transport.

I do only five because these five levels to me appear to be the among the sectors likely to feel the heat early on, either by the consumers, the producers or the government that may subsidize either consumption or production of certain goods. The numbers even tracing it only 5 levels already suggest a huge portion of of the economy should be affected.

That is not at all comforting.

Fertilizer disruption

O&G and is not the only source of the disruption. Fertilizer manufacturing, which uses natural gas as input, is also a major point of trouble in its own right. The chart below traces fertilizer’s immediate users.

Quantitative tracing

These charts are drawn to scale. For laypersons, that means it is more than possible to trace the expected quantitative effects on all industries using the underlying data. How would one ringgit change in output price of oil and gas affect the change in prices of other downstream sectors? How would one unit of volume change in oil and gas affect change in other sectors?

That will be some further calculations I will do in private.

^[1] — for crude oil & natural gas, coke & refined petroleum, basic chemicals and specialty chemicals, the corresponding rectangles represent total output and imports of the respective sectors. For the rest sitting at the end nodes (to the most right of the chart), they instead represent sum of input from the supplying upstream sectors. For instance, while basic chemicals node represents all of its output and imports, plastic products node only represents the sum of inputs used from basic chemicals and specialty chemicals. For the end node (right most), only sectors using at least 1% of its supplier output are listed. Anything below that is aggregated under the label others. This is done for simplicity’s sake

[2803] Troubling tales from Uber drivers

Unlike cabbies whose occupation is mostly driving (save for the minority), most Uber drivers drive part-time. I have had engineers, civil servants, doctorate students and advertising people as my Uber driver.

That occupational diversity makes conversation during an Uber ride much more interesting than that during a typical taxi journey. I have heard fascinating tidbits across industries as Uber transports me around Kuala Lumpur. This makes Uber a gold mine for economic anecdotes, giving colour and warmth to hard cold data.

These conversations have turned depressing lately.

The economy is going through a rough patch and official data tells you just as much. No citing of how well Malaysia ranks in the WEF Global Competitiveness Index — an index that does not measure economic cycles — can overcome concerns over the economy at the moment.

We are not in a recession but recession as a concept can be a statistical abstract. I would suppose in personal terms, you are in a recession if you lose your job and then struggle to meet your financial obligations. It is within this context my Uber conversations took place.

The worst stories almost always come from oil and gas professionals. With low petroleum prices and spending cuts by Petronas, the whole Malaysian oil and gas sector is in a recession of their own.

This has led one geologist to drive Uber. He used to spend months at sea and all around the world on lucrative contracts looking for oil and gas for big companies. But he has not been out of Kuala Lumpur for a while now. There is no new contract to sign. Nobody is exploring anymore.

Petroleum professionals like him are used to big pay and those in the industry did appear to be among the best paid compared to the rest. And this geologist in particular was used to big spending. He bought a property in a good neighbourhood along with a car last year through bank borrowings. Then, the repayment seemed insignificant.

But the times are changing. With no job on the horizon and no money coming in, his personal finances are not in a great shape currently. He is not alone. ”My friends are trying to rent out their places. They did not need the money before but now every cent counts,” he insisted.

I fear what this portends. These are highly qualified and well-paid members of the middle class. Upper middle class perhaps but they are now at risk of losing that status.

There has always been somebody struggling with their finances even during good times. But the idea a person with a fine education such as the geologist could fall so far down so rudely because of something out of his control made me shrink in my seat as he drove me towards my destination.

There might be some comfort the petroleum industry employs just a small segment of the Malaysian labour force.

Yet, it is not the only one in trouble. Retail is not doing well too. It is unclear if the tough time there is temporarily caused by the GST or due to something bigger and more lasting. Meanwhile, euphemisms like downsizing, voluntary separation scheme and ”having to let you go” are making its rounds in the banking sector.

Another sector I have had anecdotes to share is advertising.

One person running a small production house told me he drove Uber because there were fewer and fewer advertising jobs available for grabs these days. ”In tough times,” he said when the lights were red, ”businesses would cut advertising spending first. It is the easiest thing to do for them.” Indeed advertising expenditure has fared badly so far, contracting 9 per cent in the first eight months this year compared to 2014.

Before we parted ways, he joked driving was his full-time job now judging by the hours he spent on the road instead of at the desk doing creative work.

I only hope these are mere anecdotes.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in The Malay Mail on October 29 2015.