Venezuela’s state-owned PDVSA will have available by March 370,000 b/d of crude, or 35.2% of crude available for export, that has been left without a market because US sanctions against PDVSA that prevent it from accessing to the US market, according to a technical report seen by S&P Global Platts. PDVSA has estimated an export volume of 1.050 million b/d in March, according to the technical report, which will be available by “tenders in the international market and direct negotiations,” according to a PDVSA official source, who spoke on condition ...

India has asked one buyer of Venezuelan oil to consider paying the South American nation’s national oil company PDVSA in a way that avoids the U.S. financial system, an Indian government source said, after Washington imposed fresh sanctions on Venezuela last month. The United States is seeking to cut off Venezuela’s oil revenue and pressure the nation’s President Nicolas Maduro to step down after it recognised opposition leader Juan Guaido as head of state. The sanctions mean that if oil buyers pay PDVSA through the U.S. banking system, the funds ...

* PT Freeport Indonesia’s copper concentrate export permit expired on Feb. 15, and the company has not received export recommendations from the mining ministry that will help it to obtain a new permit, company spokesman Riza Pratama said on Monday in a text message. * The unit of Freeport McMoRan for the time being is shipping part of its production to its smelter in East Java, Pratama said. * He declined to disclose the new export quota it proposed to the government. * Indonesia forecast copper concentrate exports to drop ...

Two disparate decisions from opposite corners of the world have sounded warnings for the future of Australia’s coal industry. Key points: Germany wants to exit coal power by 2038, which could have implications for Australian coal producers Renewables last year overtook coal as the key source of energy in the European nation Environmental groups are pushing candidates to outline their position on climate change ahead of the upcoming federal election In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed the country would exit coal power by 2038. In New South Wales, a court ...

Copper prices edged up Monday, buoyed by hopes for a trade agreement between the U.S. and China on a day of thinner-than-normal volumes. The industrial metal was up 0.3% at $6,243.50 a metric ton, with trading volumes expected to drain away later in the day with the U.S. on vacation. Gold, meanwhile, ticked up 0.1% to $1,324.50 a troy ounce as the U.S. dollar edged lower. The WSJ Dollar Index, which measures the U.S. currency against a basket of 16 others, was last down 0.1%, extending its five-day losses to ...

The future of OPEC+ deal will become clear in April after the situation with sanctions against Iran is clarified, Lukoil President Vagit Alekperov told TASS on the sidelines of the Russian Investment Forum in Sochi. “Everything will depend on how the situation around Iran develops in April. How much the sanctions will be strengthened,” he said. OPEC and other oil-producing countries that are not part of the cartel agreed in December last year to cut production by 1.2 mln barrels per day against the level of October 2018. According to ...

Asian refining margins for 10ppm gasoil rose on Monday to their highest in 12 weeks, buoyed by tightening supply, while cash discounts for the industrial fuel widened marginally on the back of weaker buying interests in the physical market. Refining margins or cracks for 10ppm gasoil climbed to $15.72 a barrel over Dubai crude during Asian trading hours, a fresh high since end-November. The benchmark gasoil margins, which have increased about 19 percent since the beginning of this year, were at $15.27 a barrel on Friday. The recent gains have ...

Coming off a remarkable December, the energy industry kicked off 2019 with record-setting numbers. The American Petroleum Institute’s latest Monthly Statistical Report (MSR) shows the U.S. natural gas and oil industry set multiple records in January, including: Strongest gasoline demand (8.9 million barrels per day, mb/d) for the month January on record since 1945. Record refinery and petrochemical demand for other oils’ in any month (5.7 mb/d) U.S. production of crude oil (11.9 mb/d) and natural gas liquids (NGLs) (4.9 mb/d) Refinery throughput (17.3 mb/d) and capacity utilization (93.1 percent) ...

— Oil prices rose Monday morning, holding on to near three-month highs reached at the end of last week amid a weaker dollar and signs of shrinking global crude supply. — Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, was trading up 0.12% at $66.33 a barrel on London’s Intercontinental Exchange. — West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. oil standard, were up 0.74% at $56.00 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. HIGHLIGHTS OPEC: Brent climbed by 6.7% last week, bolstered by fresh evidence the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries ...

Middle East crude benchmarks Dubai and Oman eased on Monday, down from this month’s peaks as most refiners have completed their sour crude purchases while an outage at the Safaniyah field in Saudi Arabia appeared to have little impact on heavy oil supplies to Asia, traders said. Brent’s premium to Dubai quotes widened to 73 cents a barrel on Monday after the Middle East oil benchmark softened. The Safaniyah field suffered a power outage earlier this month but Saudi Aramco has maintained full contractual supplies to several Asian refiners for ...

Officially, Venezuela has the world’s largest crude oil reserves with 303 billion barrels of proved reserves. But, a lot of this oil is extra-heavy crude oil, and may not be economical to produce at prevailing prices. Thus, some portion of Venezuela’s barrels may in reality no longer be in the “proved reserves” category. Consider that Venezuela’s proved reserves jumped from 80 billion barrels in 2005 to 300 billion barrels in 2014. The main reason for that wasn’t a bunch of new oil discoveries. No, it was the fact that oil ...

Hopes of progress in Sino-U.S. trade talks and expectations of policy stimulus from central banks lifted world stocks to 2-1/2 month highs on Monday, though European gains were dampened by concerns over the car sector’s outlook. MSCI’s All-Country World Index rose 0.3 percent after Japan’s Nikkei closed up 1.8 percent at its highest level of the year and MSCI’s index of Asian equities rose almost 1 percent. Shanghai blue chips surged 2.7 percent to their highest finish in more than six months. Wall Street futures suggested that U.S. stocks would ...

After the synchronised global economic expansion of 2017 came the asynchronous growth of 2018, when most countries other than the United States started to experience slowdowns. Worries about US inflation, the US Federal Reserve’s policy trajectory, ongoing trade wars, Italian budget and debt woes, China’s slowdown, and emerging-market fragilities led to a sharp fall in global equity markets toward the end of the year. The good news at the start of 2019 is that the risk of an outright global recession is low. The bad news is that we are ...

The world economy is caught in a “delicate equilibrium” between stabilization and a further downturn, according to Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, and that balance could look even shakier over the next few days. Early measures of factory activity from Asia, Europe and the United States – which typically give signals of momentum in the overall economy – will be scrutinized by investors, many of whom fear that the sudden weakness of late 2018 is intensifying. Trade tensions have weighed heavily on factories around the world, something that is ...

Central bankers get a chance to flesh out their increasingly dovish outlooks for monetary policy this year as economic data continue to disappoint. The U.S. Federal Reserve will on Wednesday publish minutes from its recent meeting, which will likely show how much conviction there was among policy makers to suspend their interest rate hiking campaign. Fed officials John Williams, Richard Clarida and Randal Quarles are among those speaking on Friday. “Policy makers over-corrected in a dovish direction in January,” said Carl Riccadonna, chief U.S. economist at Bloomberg Economics. “However, the ...