Oil prices fell 4 percent on Tuesday, dropping for a third consecutive session as reports of swelling inventories and forecasts of record U.S. and Russian output combined with a sharp sell-off in global stock markets. <\/p>\n
U.S. crude oil fell $2.04, or 4.1 percent, to a low of $47.84, its weakest since September 2017, before recovering to around $48.10 by 0920 GMT.<\/p>\n
North Sea Brent crude fell $2.41, or 4.0 percent, to a low of $57.20, a 14-month low, and last traded around $57.61, down $2.00.<\/p>\n
Both crude oil benchmarks have shed more than 30 percent since early October due to swelling global inventories.<\/p>\n
“A large part of the move (lower) is due to a broader market sell-off, with both U.S. and Asian equity markets coming under pressure,” said commodities strategist Warren Patterson at Dutch bank ING in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n
“Specifically for the oil market, there are no clear signs yet of the market tightening,” he added.<\/p>\n
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other oil producers agreed this month to curb production by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd), equivalent to more than 1 percent of global demand, in an attempt to drain tanks and boost prices.<\/p>\n
But the cuts won’t happen until next month and meanwhile production has been at or near record highs in the United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia, undermining spot prices.<\/p>\n
Russian oil output has hit a record 11.42 million bpd this month, an industry source familiar with the data told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Oil production from seven major U.S. shale basins is by the year-end expected to climb to more than 8 million bpd for the first time, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Monday. <\/p>\n
Inventories at the U.S. storage hub of Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery point for the oil futures contract, rose more than 1 million barrels from Dec. 11 to 14, traders said, citing data from market intelligence firm Genscape. <\/p>\n
The United States has surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest oil producer, with total crude output climbing to a record 11.7 million bpd. <\/p>\n
With prices falling, unprofitable shale producers will eventually stop operating and cut supply, but that could take some time, and meanwhile inventories keep growing. <\/p>\n
“Rising U.S. shale production levels along with a deceleration in global economic growth have threatened to offset OPEC+ efforts,” said Benjamin Lu Jiaxuan, at Singapore-based brokerage Phillip Futures. <\/p>\n
“Market confidence remains extremely delicate.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices fell 4 percent on Tuesday, dropping for a third consecutive session as reports of swelling inventories and forecasts of record U.S. and Russian output combined with a sharp sell-off in global stock markets. U.S. crude oil fell $2.04, or 4.1 percent, to a low of $47.84, its weakest since September 2017, before recovering to around $48.10 by 0920 GMT. North Sea Brent crude fell $2.41, or 4.0 percent, to a low of $57.20, a 14-month low, and last traded around $57.61, down $2.00. Both crude oil benchmarks have shed more than 30 percent since early October due to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}