Price War! Oil drops 24% on Saudi Reversal & COVID Economic Carnage
Oil markets were tumbling well before the open today, and unfortunately we didn't see that turn around at all through the course of the official trading day.
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Oil markets were tumbling well before the open today, and unfortunately we didn't see that turn around at all through the course of the official trading day.
This past Friday, ahead of the scheduled OPEC meeting this week, Saudi Arabia abruptly announced a new Energy Minister, Prince Adbulaziz. The move sparked momentary concern that this was a signal the Saudi's would be reversing course on the OPEC+ production cut agreement, but it appears they are actually doubling down.
Prices surged this morning after a slow down on Friday, on news from the G20 Summit that Russia and Saudi Arabia have agreed to extend the OPEC+ production cuts by another 6-9 months. The agreement still needs to be ratified at the upcoming OPEC meeting, but that is essentially a formality at this point, given Russia & the Saudi's are in agreement.
Futures are crashing on the NYMEX today, with WTI down around 5% thus far on the day, around the $48/bbl mark, on track to potentially close out at a 15 month low. Refined products are tanking as well, at time of writing, ULSD is off .0472 & RBOB is down .0341
August has been all over the place. Crude futures this month were up 23% in less than 3 weeks as of the 28th. We've bounced from an August 10th low of $41.71 to an August 19th a high of $48.52 - and today we’re in the middle at $46.35.
In a suprise move today, the oil minister of Iran stated that Iran would support the effort by OPEC and non-OPEC countries to stabilize the oil market and oil prices. The now-confirmed rumor that the Saudis and Russians were amenable to agreeing on a production ceiling has been circulating for a while, and served to briefly prop prices Tuesday - but the lack of a solid agreement, and the assumption that Iran would not cooperate had backed prices off their intraday highs.
Another wild week!
Crude came back in a big way in trading today – with intraday highs briefly breaking $50 before settling out at $49.43/bbl. (Fun fact – we haven’t seen WTI break $50 since July)
Today once again started in positive territory, with Crude up almost 2% and refined products creeping higher, but we saw a quick reversal mid-morning when products dropped into the negative, where they would end up settling at the close. (Crude ended up settling down to $47.81, ULSD was down -.0319 to $1.5796 and Gas dropped -.0462 to $1.390)
Yesterday we saw Crude jump almost 2% on a weaker dollar and speculations about Russia and OPEC’s upcoming meeting. Today more fuel was added to the fire (no pun intended) and we saw Crude continue to jump, settling out up an additional 4.9% to $48.53/bbl. Going along for the ride, ULSD closed up (+.0632) to 1.6115 and RBOB jumped (+.0509) to 1.4362.