Brent crude fell towards $58 a barrel on Tuesday as the dollar scaled multi-year highs, but data showing a recovery in China’s annual consumer inflation checked losses. The greenback hit Continue Reading
By Eric Yep Crude-oil futures were rangebound in Asian trade Tuesday as markets await this week’s energy agency reports for a fresh assessment of global oil supply and demand balances. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in April traded at $50.13 a barrel at 0441 GMT, up $0.13 in the Globex electronic session. Brent crude for April delivery on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose $0.04 to $58.57 a barrel. The oil benchmarks had diverged overnight, with Nymex West Texas Intermediate crude gaining 0.8% in the last trading session and Brent crude losing 2%. Nymex crude was supported by an industry report that indicated a slower increase in U.S. oil supply, while Brent crude has sagged toward the bottom of its recent trading range ahead of the expiry of the April futures contract next Monday, according to Citi Futures. The market is polarised regarding […]
OPEC Secretary-General of OPEC Abdalla al-Badri tells delegates in Bahrain supply and demand dynamics should balance during the second half of 2015. UPI/Maryam Rahmanian The price for Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, was off more than 2 percent from Friday’s settle at around $60 barrel, and a bit more than 1 percent less than the previous close, to trade at $59.08 per barrel early Monday. Oil prices have recovered from a January floor below the $50 per barrel mark, though Brent prices have been unable to sustain levels much beyond $60. The steady decline in crude oil prices since June is a response to a market tilted toward the supply side, thanks in large part to increased production from the United States. Members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in November opted to keep production levels static despite price swings in order to protect their market share. […]
The U.S. and global oil-price benchmarks diverged Monday, as the U.S. market rose on supply expectations at a key storage hub while concerns about a continued oversupply weighed on global prices. Light, sweet crude for April delivery settled up 39 cents, or 0.8%, at $50 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent, the global benchmark, fell $1.20, or 2%, to $58.53 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. Data service Genscape Inc. reported Monday that oil stockpiles in Cushing, Okla., rose by 1.7 million barrels between Feb. 27 and March 6, according to two industry sources, with most of the increase in the first part of that week. Genscape’s numbers were “a lot lower than everybody expected,” said Carl Larry, director of oil and gas at Frost & Sullivan. “It looks like we’re seeing a lot more crude being pushed down from Cushing to the Gulf Coast,” where […]
The IEA’s latest medium-term oil forecast is a useful update to the thinking behind its current long-term outlook, which predated much of the current price drop. They expect shale output to be relatively resilient and rely on Iraq’s capacity to expand output in spite of significant security risks. When the International Energy Agency issued its most recent long-term energy forecast last November 12th, Brent crude oil traded just above $80 per barrel. At that point it had fallen only half as far as it would by January 2015, compared to its June 2014 high of $115. As a result, the IEA’s assessment of the price drop in its 2015 World Energy Outlook was incomplete, to say the least. The agency’s Medium-Term Oil Market Report , issued in February, provides a necessary update and some interesting insights about how–and how far–they envision the oil market recovering. Anyone expecting the IEA […]
By Nicole Friedman NEW YORK–Natural-gas prices dropped to a one-month low Monday on expectations that warmer weather would reduce demand for the heating fuel. Futures gained 3.8% last week as frigid temperatures continued into the first week of March, following the coldest February in about 30 years. About half of U.S. households use natural gas to heat their homes, so freezing weather boosts natural-gas consumption. But temperatures warmed up over the weekend in the Northeast, which is a key natural-gas-consuming region. Front-month April futures settled down 16.1 cents, or 5.7%, at $2.678 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest settlement price since Feb. 10. Traders who had bet on higher prices closed out positions after weather forecasts released over the weekend called for moderate temperatures, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy-advisory firm Ritterbusch & Associates. "After the mild updates that we saw over […]
SYDNEY (Reuters) – The U.S. dollar scored multi-year highs against the euro and yen in Asia on Tuesday amid starkly diverging outlooks for interest rates globally, while currencies from emerging markets came under mounting pressure from risk aversion. The skittish mood spread to Asian stocks as MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS slipped 0.6 percent. Driving the dollar was speculation the Federal Reserve would start lifting interest rates from mid-year, while central banks in the European Union and Japan were busy easing policy by buying billions in government bonds. The European Central Bank began its trillion-euro bond buying campaign on Monday, nudging down yields in Germany and other core EU sovereigns. Selling in the euro gathered pace through the Asian session as a break of $1.0822 EUR= triggered stop-loss offers and took it as deep as $1.0785, the lowest since September 2003. Bears are now eyeing […]
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Traders who have been storing oil since the start of the year are selling some supplies back into the market, completing a trade-play that made oil storage profitable, and re-injecting fuel into an already oversupplied market. The selling signals a winding down of a strategy that has seen at least 50 million barrels of oil stored in tankers, equivalent to about one month’s consumption in Britain, although traders said it was not clear how much oil has been sold. A steep fall in the price of crude from last June to January enabled traders to potentially make money by storing oil for delivery at a later date, as the market moved into an unusually large contango, with prices in future months well above the spot price. Traders such as Trafigura [TRAFGF.UL], Vitol [VITOLV.UL] and Gunvor [GGL.UL], as well as energy majors like BP and Shell stored […]
MANAMA (Reuters) – The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Secretary-General said on Sunday that the group’s exporters should not cut output to "subsidize" higher-cost shale, an energy source whose recent growth is blamed by OPEC for weakening oil markets. Abdullah al-Badri added in remarks to a conference in Bahrain that tight oil, a term he has used for shale, was "not a challenge for us" but the market should now be left to decide which source of petroleum could survive at current prices. Oil prices have sunk to near six year lows in recent months as a result of a large supply glut, due mostly to a sharp rise in U.S. shale production as well as weaker global demand. The rapid decline has left several smaller oil producing countries reeling and has forced oil companies to slash budgets. "We welcome tight oil… but this source of energy costs […]
Members of Congress rise to applaud during a GOP-sponsored address by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Republican senators, like Netanyahu, hope to scuttle a pending nuclear deal with Iran. Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call / Getty Images There’s a charming naiveté to the open letter [PDF] by 47 Republican senators that condescendingly seeks to explain features of the U.S. constitutional system to Iran’s leaders that they otherwise “may not fully understand.” The missive warns that, with respect to “your nuclear negotiations with our government … any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress” could be revoked by the next president “with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.” Beyond the amusing inaccuracies about U.S. parliamentary order , it seems there are some features of the nuclear negotiations that the signatory senators don’t fully understand […]
