Mexico Fuel Week
October 21-24, 2019
Sheraton Mexico City
Mexico Fuel Week
October 21-24, 2019
Sheraton Mexico City
This hands-on 2 day workshop provides guidance to businesses in Mexico that are currently, or considering, importing fuel from the United States. Join OPIS fuel industry experts Scott Berhang and Dolores Santos as they walk you through all of the factors you must consider when establishing a brand new fuel buying strategy.
Mario Guido
OPIS Consultant
Elaine Levin
President, Powerhouse
Salvador Meljam Elias
Partner, Oil and Gas, Earnst & Young
Scott Berhang
Vice President, Global Sales
OPIS by IHSMarkit
Scott is an oil industry veteran with more than 30 years of experience covering spot markets, wholesale gasoline and diesel fuel markets, as well as industry news. He developed the OPIS West Coast Spot market report, whose spot prices have been the industry benchmark for over 20 years. Scott also travels around the country teaching fuel buyers the latest strategies on how to purchase fuel at the spot and rack level.
Dolores Santos
Fuel Supply Expert
OPIS by IHSMarkit
Dolores Santos is one of the industry’s most respected executives, with 40 years of experience buying and selling fuel for some of the industry’s largest petroleum products companies, including Wickland Oil and New West Petroleum. Before joining OPIS, Dolores was Director of Supply and Distribution for Flyers (Nella Oil Company), one of the largest and most prominent jobbers on the U.S. West Coast.
Meet your instructors and get an outline of key objectives and important concepts that will be covered during the class.
As deregulation unfolds, more and more fuel buyers and sellers in Mexico, and in U.S. border locations, want an understanding of how U.S. markets work. In this session, we will outline the U.S. Fuel Chain – how fuel moves from the refinery, to the distributor, and then ultimately to the retail station.
Now that we’ve explained how fuel gets from the refinery to the street in the U.S., let’s talk about how it gets priced. To understand that, we have to explain how futures markets and spot markets impact wholesale and retail prices. You’ll leave with a complete understanding of what a futures (paper) and a spot (physical) price are, and how they impact U.S. markets.
Fuel buyers and sellers in the U.S. know one thing – having a cost basis that is visible/transparent is a must have! But, there are a lot of benchmarks provided by Price Reporting Agencies (PRAs) to choose from. In this session, we’ll break down the choices, and explain the subtle (and not-so subtle differences) between the benchmarks. We’ll also take you through the concept of formula or index-based pricing.
Having a supply deal and a cost basis/benchmark is great, but if you don’t have a fair, clear fuel supply agreement, you are in trouble. Between Dolores and Scott, they have more than 70 years of experience seeing BAD fuel contracts. In this can’t-miss session, we’ll outline what you absolutely MUST have in a fuel supply agreement, and how to negotiate the essentials into the agreement.
Now that we’ve discussed the fuel pricing model in the U.S., let’s shift gears and look at how pricing works in Mexico. Price discovery from PRA’s (price reporting agencies) is just beginning to emerge, and in this session, our experts will help you to understand what price discovery reports for both rack and for spot are available in Mexico.
The concept of the “brand” is very powerful in the U.S., and we expect it to emerge in Mexico’s deregulated markets as well. But what is really involved in branding a retail site? What are the risks and the rewards? What can you expect to encounter with the brand, and what do you need to know ahead of time to negotiate a fair brand agreement? No one knows this better than Dolores Santos – in this session, she’ll walk you through all of this, plus give you good AND bad examples of the branding agreements she’s worked with in her 40 years in the U.S. fuel industry.
The one issue that no fuel buyer or seller can avoid is credit. Buyers need it to get fuel, sellers must extend it to build up their customer base. But credit is tricky – what happens when fuel prices spike, and the cost of a load of fuel doubles? That impacts not only the seller, but also the buyer. In this critical session, Dolores – who has managed credit for some of the largest fuel distributors in the U.S. – will outline what you need to know when it comes to providing and asking for credit.
If you buy or sell fuel, you have risk – risk that prices go up, or risk that prices collapse. You have to buy, or sell into the market EVERY DAY, and in doing so, you have to manage price volatility. We’ll look at different business models from the buy and the sell side and talk about specific cases of price risk. We’ll also offer basic suggestions on how to mitigate that risk in rising and in falling markets. Plus, we’ll give you the dos and don’ts of setting up a risk or hedging program in your business.
Mexico fuel taxes are complicated, and changing – IEPS (special tax on production and services, assessed annually) and other government pricing adjustments have a huge impact on fuel costs in Mexico, and ultimately affect the competitiveness of imports from the United States. Understanding how Mexico fuel taxes work is critical to anyone who is buying, or selling fuel in Mexico. In this session, we will break it all down, and give you the information you need to make those competitive assessments.
As deregulation proceeds, more and more U.S. suppliers are going to look to export fuel into Mexico. And many fuel suppliers in Mexico are going to look for opportunities to import fuel, especially now that the U.S. fuel market is in an oversupplied/falling price period. But, exporting or importing fuel comes with many issues from a tax and a legal standpoint on both sides of the border. In this must-attend session, we’ll break down the essentials you need to know to either export, or import fuel.