Mid-Day Oil Summary: Crude Resumes Bearish Trend

Crude markets are holding a bearish tone again today after volatile trading yesterday saw front month Brent fall to a low of nearly 78.4$/bbl before rebounding, caused by the delay to the OPEC+ meeting amid disagreement on output from African member states. Angola today announced the country does not plan to leave the producer group.

• Brent JAN 24 down -1% at 81.17$/bbl
• WTI JAN 24 down -1% at 76.33$/bbl
• WTI-Brent up 0.01$/bbl at -4.84$/bbl
• Nigeria and Angola are fighting the adjustment of the OPEC crude output quotas that led to a delay of the OPEC+ meeting, despite not meeting current output targets according to OPEC secondary sources and market sources. Despite the delay, the market is still likely expecting Saudi to extend voluntary cuts in next year.
• Angola’s OPEC governor Estevao Pedro quashed any rumors about the country leaving OPEC+ over the latest spat with the group surrounding its tighter 2024 proposed production quotas.
• Chinese independent refiners are holding off on making new purchases of Venezuelan oil due to discrepancies in offered prices following the US’ relaxation on the country’s sanctions, trading sources told Reuters.
• Indian crude oil imports rose by 2.2% on the year in October to 18.53mn tons, provisional data from the oil ministry’s Petroleum Planning & Analysis Cell showed.
• Oil drillers such as Occidental Petroleum Corp, W&T Offshore Inc and Talos Energy have shut in 62kbpd of offshore production on Thursday following the US Gulf oil spill according to Bloomberg.
• The CDU at Valero’s 235kbpd Port Arthur refinery in Texas will go under maintenance in January, people familiar with the operations told Reuters.
• The 76kbpd gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracker-2 (FCC-2) at TotalEnergies’ 238kbpd Port Arthur refinery in Texas is currently operating at 75% of capacity after Tuesday’s restart, people familiar with plant operations told Reuters.
• A power plant linked with Exxon’s Antwerp refinery has been halted due to a fault according to a Nordpol alert.
• China’s gasoline demand is expected to peak at 170mn tons at around 2025, Qiu Xuan, a researcher with PetroChina Planning & Engineering Institute, said, cited by Bloomberg.
• China’s gasoil demand is expected to rise to 220.8mn tons this year, up by 3.09% on the year according to OilChem.
• Chinese gasoline exports are expected to decline by 10% on the year on 2023 to 11.77mn tons due to poor margins, JLC analyst, Wang Yanting, said.
  • US gasoline crack down -0.1$/bbl at 15.16$/bbl
  • US ULSD crack up 1.4$/bbl at 41.86$/bbl