Brent Slides Below $64 as Trump and OPEC+ Rattle Crude Markets

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The double whammy of OPEC+’s unpredictability and Donald Trump’s heated rhetoric over China ‘totally violating its agreement’ with the US put oil prices under renewed pressure, sending ICE Brent slightly below $64 per barrel with WTI balancing on the edge of the $60 per barrel threshold.

Should the weekend bring an OPEC+ surprise of a bigger-than-expected unwinding, the downslide could very well continue in the first week of June, OilPrices.com reports.

Whilst oil markets are more or less anticipating a 411,000 b/d increase from the ‘Great Eight’ of OPEC+ in July, Saudi Arabia and Russia are considering potentially hiking output even more, partly to punish over-producers such as Kazakhstan.

Saudi Arabia’s national oil company Saudi Aramco (TADAWUL:2222) is poised to continue tapping the financial markets to meet its investment plans after a $5 billion bond sale, saying its 5.3% gearing ratio is still lower than most of industry peers’.

Canadian oil companies operating in Alberta are on alert as wildfires continue to spread across Manitoba and Saskatchewan, with Cenovus evacuating non-essential personnel from its 180,000 b/d Foster Creek upgrader and smaller producers halting output altogether.

Libya’s Benghazi government has threatened to announce another period of force majeure on the North African country’s oil fields and export terminals, citing repeated assaults on the National Oil Corporation, wishing to relocate it from Tripoli to eastern cities.

Top Iranian officials stated that Tehran could halt enrichment activities if the US releases frozen Iranian funds worth some $6 billion and recognizes the Middle Eastern nation’s right to civilian nuclear development, increasing the odds of a US-Iran nuclear deal soon.

US oil major Chevron (NYSE:CVX) has terminated its production and service contracts in Venezuela after the Trump administration’s two-month wind-down period lapsed this week, with state oil firm PDVSA taking over most of its 270,000-280,000 b/d of heavy sour exports.

Marking the entry of Qatar into the Syrian energy landscape, the war-torn Levantine country signed a memorandum of understanding with Qatar’s UCC Holding to build power generation assets, including four CCGT power plants and one 1 GW solar plant, worth $7 billion.

French energy giant TotalEnergies (NYSE:TTE) announced it agreed to sell its 12.5% stake in the Bonga field in offshore Nigeria to the project operator Shell (LON:SHEL) for $510 million, marking its exit from one of the African country’s largest producing assets.

Kazakhstan, arguably OPEC+’s most notorious overproducer, said it cannot force Western oil majors to cut their production and would even seek to increase output beyond the OPEC-reported 1.823 million b/d, some 400,000 b/d above its output quota.

Having transferred some $22 billion in foreign assets into its Australian subsidiary, global mining giant Glencore (LON:GLEN) is preparing for a surprise merger with fellow miner Rio Tinto (NYSE:RIO), especially after the ouster of CEO Jakob Stausholm.

China’s Foreign Ministry declared that Beijing would seek to cooperate over its rare earth export controls (introduced in April) with car and semiconductor producers in Europe and India, potentially indicating some softening towards non-US customers.

The US Commerce Department informed domestic exporters of ethane – Enterprise Product Partners and Energy Transfer – that they would need to seek licences to export any volumes to China, a country that accounts for 50% of global ethane flows.

Global trading house Gunvor and Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR are headed towards a standoff to buy Italian refiner IP with final offers expected to be submitted by the end of May, with its current owner, the Peretti family, seeking a valuation of around $3.5 billion.