Mid-Day Oil Summary: Crude Continues Trend Lower

Crude is maintaining the bearish sentiment with front month futures reversing earlier gains to trade negative on the day although still above the lows from last week.

• Brent FEB 24 down -0.6% at 75.54$/bbl
• WTI JAN 24 down -0.6% at 70.89$/bbl
• Calendar: The EIA Short Term Energy Outlook is due for release at 10:00 ET (17:00 GMT) today. The API oil inventory data is due for release today at 16:30 ET. The US CPI data due at 08:30 ET is expected to show a slight easing in headline to 3.1% and core steady at 4%.
• A biofuel tanker was struck by a missile in the Red Sea Monday, launched from Houthi controlled territory in Yemen. The tanker was bound for Italy.
• Despite the latest border escalation with Venezuela, oil majors operating in Guyana’s waters are “moving ahead aggressively” with production plans according to President Irfaan Ali.
• Chevron has increased its crude production Venezuela to 150kbpd, from 50kbpd prior to the US sanction relief in October, while conditions are still too uncertain to ramp up investments, Chevron chief executive Mike Wirth said.
• A Russian delegation led by Deputy PM Alexander Novak will visit Beijing from Dec. 12-16 to participate in the 20th meeting of the Russian Chinese intergovernmental commission on energy cooperation, according to TASS.
• Russian weekly seaborne crude exports rose by 144kbpd to 3.2mbpd in the week to 10 December, Bloomberg ship-tracking data showed, driven by a big jump in weekly flows after storms disrupted Black Sea shipments.
• Russian crude feedstock supplies to Finland's Neste and Poland's Orlen have fallen from over 50% in 2022 to nearly zero in 2023 with supplies diversified to seaborne deliveries according to Bloomberg.
• Russian refiners have been ordered to increase supplies of winter diesel fuel available for exchange trading according to the Russian government after the latest fuels meeting with authorities.
• TotalEnergies halted equipment at the 219kbpd Donges refinery, which has prompted the use of emergency flares, the operator said.
• Diesel and gasoline cracks spreads are drifting lower this month amid concern for demand and with robust US inventories ahead of API data later today and EIA inventories tomorrow. US gasoline demand fell again last week to the second lowest weekly level since early 2023 according to GasBuddy data.
  • US gasoline crack up 0.1$/bbl at 14.75$/bbl
  • US ULSD crack down -0.6$/bbl at 37.52$/bbl