Oil commentary - 29 March 2019
Morning all. Brent closed last night down 0.01 to settle at $67.82 and WTi closed at $59.30 up 0.26. That sweet smell of a Friday, the last of March, the days start getting longer and that weekend where trips up and down the country are being planned to various garden centres. Then you wake up and realise you're a bull in this oil market and have visions of the Knight King all day long. Dark. Look, I told you it was a matter of time before a tourette reaction emanated from his Trumpishness and yesterday proved it. I said last Wednesday that prices were perilously close to a trigger being set off under that mane of flowing golden hair and I thought it would read as follows: "Oil prices high again!! not good!! OPEC+ you must do something!!! We aren't!! But you must!!! Not good!!!!". Now, there weren't quite as many !! but I wasn't far off, his tweet yesterday read "“Very important that OPEC increase the flow of Oil. World Markets are fragile, price of Oil getting too high. Thank you!”. At least he said Thank You I suppose, manners cost nothing and all that. Last Wednesday when I wrote the above, Brent settled at $68.50. Last night we settled at $67.82. So, anything toward that $70 handle it seems Trump isn't particularly comfortable with. Let's see what happens. What else is going on? Well Solskaer has been appointed full time Man Utd boss so expect that to trigger a curse and Man Utd lose every game from now until the end of the season, fingers crossed (sorry Chris). I'll leave you with this from Orbital Energy- “China’s stockpiling continues to drive overall global stock builds, expanding the year-on-year surplus up to 119 million (barrels)…OPEC inventories remain stable to modestly higher and are at a 22.4 million (-barrel) surplus to last year. The EIA reported U.S. refinery runs are 900 million barrels below last year, which does not bode well for the crude demand bulls as margins are compressing despite lower runs as refiners front-load maintenance ahead of IMO 2020.” Balanced market? Hmmm. Good weekend.