Crude Oil Futures

  The crude oil markets are in turmoil on many fronts and the price has been falling for the past few days, although the rate of fall gradually came down – an indication the values may turn green on the stock traders soon. In these circumstances, the last thing that any investor in the sector wants to hear is the infighting in the OPEC+ or conflicts involving buyers and producers. Against this backdrop, the talks between the new Indian Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Hardeep Singh Puri, and his Saudi counterpart, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, was a good sign in boosting the positive sentiments in the crude oil markets. Since India is the world’s third largest importer of the crude oil, warming relations between the two old allies are good for both sides and the region. The relations between the two countries deteriorated in April over the production cuts by the OPEC+ and the Saudi minister and the former Indian Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas publicly fell out tha

  The news, emerged in the late afternoon on Wednesday, which said that the UAE and Saudi Arabia had reached a deal to get past the OPEC+ impasse has already done the damage to the crude oil markets. The fall was so significant that even the encouraging report from the EIA, showing a drop of 8 million barrels from the US crude oil inventories for the weekly period ending July 9, could not reverse the trend. It was, in fact, twice as big as what was predicted by the API, American Petroleum Institute; the forecast by the latter was close to 4 million barrels for the same period. With a fall of this magnitude in the US inventories, usually, gloomy news gets drowned out: however, it did not do the trick this time; as of 14:00 GMT on Thursday, the fall in price of the WTI and Brent were 1.42% and 1.35% respectively. The energy minister of the UAE, meanwhile,   brushed aside the reported agreement between the UAE and Saudi Arabia. That means there is no possibility of the markets hav

  The price of crude oil that increased on Tuesday, but at a slower rate, fell again on Thursday by a modest amount. As of 09:30 GMT, the percentage fall of WTI and Brent were 0.55 and 0.44 respectively. The price of crude oil dropped on Wednesday despite the forecast of yet another fall in the US crude inventories. The API, American Petroleum Institute, in its latest forecast, says that the US oil inventories for the period ending July 9 have fallen by 4.079 million barrels. The same data from the EIA, US Energy Administration, is expected on Wednesday. The API predicted a fall of 7.983 million barrels for the week ending July 2. The EIA figure for the same period turned out to be 8.109 million barrels. If confirmed by the EIA, it is going to be the 8 th successive weekly drop of the US crude oil inventories – and indication that the traffic is back on the roads. Analysts attribute the surprise fall of crude oil price to a catalogue of factors that breed uncertainty in the

  An Iranian spokesman of the Foreign Ministry admitted that talks are underway with the US on prisoner-swaps, confirming the reports in this regard in certain Middle Eastern news outlets. Referring to the talks on the JCPOA, 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, the same official said over 90% of progress has been made so far after six rounds of talks, while admitting the rest being the hardest. He, however, emphasized that what the discussions achieved far outweigh what was not achieved, without losing the optimism of an ultimate success. The thorny issue has been Iran’s insistence of having a guarantee from the US that a change in administration would not be led to yet another policy ‘U’ turn; the US is not keen on that, though. The Russian officials, meanwhile, echoes the same sentiment as do their Iranian counterparts. Although Iran wants the deal done on its terms, its oil sector cannot hide the hope of the revival of the JCPOA: it has been stepping up the production of oil even b

  The price of crude oil unexpectedly stumbled on Monday despite the evidence of tightening supply and rapidly falling inventories. Both benchmarks, WTI and Brent fell by over 1.2 %. As of 15:00 GMT on Monday, the price of WTI and Brent were at $73.50 and $74.64 respectively. The crude oil price had a particularly bumpy ride last week: on Monday, the anticipated OPEC+ meeting did not take place; with that the agreement to supply 400,000 bpd for the period from August to December did not materialise. The US crude oil inventories, meanwhile, fell by over 8 million barrels for the week ending, July 2.   The news of the substantial fall on Wednesday, understandably,   led to an increase in oil price on Thursday and Friday. Despite the encouraging news on the demand front, the oil price fell on Monday, this week. It looks like three factors are at play for the unexpected development: first, the predicted growth of the main global economies, according to the latest data, is far fro