Oil prices, which have been driven higher for the past four weeks, were steady on Monday, with holidays in Singapore, London and New York dampening trade, as rising concerns over demand recovery offset supply cuts. Brent had eased by 5 cents, or 0.14% to $35.08 a barrel by 1014 GMT, while U.S. oil gained 14 cents, or 0.42% to $33.39 a barrel. Both are down around 45% so far this year. “Uncertainty around the current travel patterns in the U.S. is so great that the American Automobile Association did not ...

It’s “back to the future” for oil, says Goldman Sachs, as low prices reshape the industry into how it looked in the 1990s, including a dominant position for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The return of OPEC as a major force in oil and gas production is one of five predictions in the bank’s latest edition of its Top Projects report. Other forecasts are for a significant decline in overall oil resources, an increased drive for capital efficiency, accelerating consolidation, and “the end of growth” outside the OPEC cartel. ...

A month after U.S. crude oil prices collapsed into negative territory, European gas markets are facing the prospect of also slipping into the red after a slump in demand and surging inventories pushed prices into low single digits. Dutch and British gas prices have plunged due to weak demand amid coronavirus lockdowns and strong renewables output, compounding an already oversupplied market with little available storage space left. In the European benchmark gas market, the Dutch TTF hub, the day-ahead price was down 20% at 2.50 euros per megawatt hour, equivalent ...

Oil prices rose on Monday, erasing earlier losses, as countries around the world continued to ease lockdown measures imposed to combat the coronavirus pandemic, boosting hopes for a recovery in fuel demand. Amid quiet trading, with financial centres Singapore, London and New York all closed for holidays, Brent was up 6 cents, or 0.2%, at $35.19 a barrel by 0636 GMT. U.S. oil had gained 27 cents, or 0.82%, at $33.52 a barrel. Both contracts have risen for the past four weeks, although prices are still down around 45% so ...

A weeks-long run on climbing crude oil prices came to a halt Friday courtesy of a combination of heightened geopolitical and economic tensions involving China. Front-month NYMEX WTI crude prices fell by 5% early Friday before paring some of the losses and rising back above $33/b later in the day. The action in the oil markets came after China brought a double-shot of news Friday, as the world’s most-populous nation scrapped its 2020 GDP growth target and announced a stricter national security plan for semi-autonomous Hong Kong that immediately brought ...

The U.S. and Canadian oil and natural gas rig count fell to all-time lows as North American energy firms slashed spending after global coronavirus lockdowns caused energy prices and demand to collapse. The U.S. rig count, an early indicator of future output, fell by 21 to a record low 318 in the week to May 22, according to data from energy services firm Baker Hughes Co going back to 1940. That was a third consecutive week of record lows for the U.S. rig count. In Canada, the count fell to ...

Royalties from oil pumped on Paul Ruckman’s land allowed the South Texas retiree to build a six-bedroom, seven-bathroom vacation home. He had plenty left over, and donated some of it to Helena, Texas, an 1800s ghost town that draws hundreds to historic buildings and gunfight re-enactments. The worst oil bust in decades has slashed the bounty that flowed to millions of rural Americans like Ruckman, who said his royalty checks have plummeted 70% since January. “I imagine they’re going to be dropping quite a bit more,” said Ruckman, who owns ...

China’s fuel oil production saw robust growth in April, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. The output of fuel oil skyrocketed 68 percent year on year to 3.09 million tonnes, showed the data. Meanwhile, the country’s diesel output went up 1.3 percent from a year earlier to 13.39 million tonnes, while that of liquefied petroleum gas climbed 15 percent to 3.78 million tonnes last month. Bucking the trend, gasoline output fell 12 percent year on year to 10.04 million tonnes, while kerosene production dropping 42.9 percent to ...

Commodities trader Trafigura has seized the moment and taken a rare dominant position in the North Sea crude market over the past two weeks as oil demand jumped, trading sources said. A combination of OPEC-led global production cuts, cheap freight rates and oil stuck in floating storage sent crude markets into overdrive starting at the end of April as fuel demand looked set to pick up with easing lockdowns. Differentials to benchmark dated Brent for grades around the world have shot up $6 a barrel in many cases, returning to ...

US natural gas production is hovering near a 16-month low in late May as historically weak commodity prices prompt many operators to slow drilling activity and curtail output at marginal wells. On May 20, US output tumbled to 85.5 Bcf/d, down more than 9% from its record high at 94.3 Bcf/d in November, modeled data from S&P Global Platts Analytics shows. The recent and precipitous drop in US production, which has fallen about 6.5 Bcf/d over the past five weeks, tracks similarly steep declines in crude prices and active oil-directed ...

Argentina’s move to set a $45/b domestic crude oil reference price this week has brought cheer to some oil producers, but analysts say it may take a couple of years to rebuild production, following its plunge in April, as companies keep to the sidelines because of the country’s financial crisis and erratic energy policies. The reference price will remain in effect until the end of the year, unless Brent, the international benchmark price followed in Argentina, surpasses $45/b for more than 10 days. That may not happen this year; Brent ...

China’s International Energy Exchange (INE) said on Friday it had approved another 400,000 cubic metres, or about 2.4 million barrels, of warehouse space for crude oil delivery, taking its total storage to nearly 57 million barrels. The expanded tankage comes from a tank farm owned by PetroChina International in the port of Dalian, in northeast Liaoning province. The INE has since early April more than doubled its storage for contract deliveries as strong demand from investors attracted a flurry of physical deliveries. Source: Reuters (Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by ...

The neutral zone, which is shared equally between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, produced 500,000 bpd before production was halted in late 2015. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are to suspend oil production from the neutral zone they share in June as part of cuts they agreed to shore up prices, a Kuwaiti official said. The OPEC oil cartel to which they both belong struck a deal with non-OPEC producers led by Russia in April to cut output by a record 9.7 million barrels per day after crude prices plummeted to a ...

The coronavirus pandemic has done in a handful of months what even a 27-year civil war did not: it has brought oil drilling to a halt in Angola, Africa’s second-largest oil producer. The consequences could be grave for a poor country that relies heavily on oil revenues and is saddled with debts that exceed its economic output. The halt in oil exploration, which has not been previously reported, could represent a setback for one of the most ambitious economic reform drives on the continent, aimed at cleaning up corruption and ...

More than 2.2 million b/d of US oil production has been shut in response to low prices and weak demand, US Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said. “We’ll probably see that climb a little bit more before we start to see the demand curve pick up again,” Brouillette said during a teleconference meeting of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. “Hopefully that will allow us to stabilize this recovery and also begin the process of perhaps increasing our production and seeing this industry come back as strong as it was pre-pandemic ...