Oil
Oil Prices Rise on China Stimulus and Falling U.S. Inventories
Oil prices are on track to post a weekly gain on the back of China’s economic stimulus and forecasts of lower U.S. crude inventories.
Oil prices were rising toward the end of the week, with WTI breaking back above $70 and Brent trading at $73.72. Optimism surrounding China’s economic growth after Beijing agreed to issue special treasury bonds worth roughly $411 billion helped to spark bullish sentiment in markets this week. Prices then rose even further on expectations of a crude draw in the U.S., with the EIA set to report at 13:00 EST due to a Christmas holiday delay.
Finland’s coast guard has boarded and seized the Eagle S tanker carrying Russian oil in the Baltic Sea on suspicion of having caused an outage of an undersea electricity cable connecting Finland and Estonia, investigating potential sabotage.
China approved the construction of the world’s largest hydropower dam, thrice as big as the currently largest Three Gorges Dam in central China, aiming to produce some 300 billion KWh of electricity annually in the lower reaches of Tibet’s Yarlung Zangbo River.
Amidst reports that Donald Trump might sanction Iraq’s imports of Iranian natural gas, Baghdad promised to cut flaring volumes by around 20% next year to meet rising demand, expecting to capture more than 85% of associated natural gas production.
Venture Global’s Plaquemines LNG terminal exported its first official cargo from the Louisiana facility this week, with the Venture Bayou LNG carrier indicating Germany’s Brunsbuttel as its destination, marking the first export from the 8th export terminal of the US.
China’s Ministry of Commerce issued the first batch of refined product quotas for next year totaling 19 million tonnes, unchanged year-over-year, with recent changes to the country’s 13% export tax rebate making gasoline and diesel exports sub-commercial.
Egypt reported that its Suez Canal revenues have plunged by 60% year-over-year in 2024 as Houthi maritime warfare cost the North African country at least $7 billion, worsening Cairo’s plight as the Egyptian pound slid to a record low over the past month.
Libya’s Benghazi government agreed to a proposal from the rival Tripoli government to end fuel subsidies in the war-torn country, with gasoline prices remaining artificially low at $0.11 per gallon, the second-cheapest in the world.
UK-based energy major Shell (LON:SHEL) shut down one of its oil processing units at the 237,000 b/d Pulau Bukom refinery in Singapore after the nation’s Port Authority reported a leak of oil products together with the cooling water discharge.
The government of Mongolia has retracted the announcement of reaching a $1.6 billion deal with France’s uranium mining giant Orano, marking another odd roadblock on the way towards launching the Zuuvch Ovoo mine, in development since 2013.
The Turkish government is readying to start negotiations with the new al-Julani government of Syria to delineate maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean Sea, a move that would allow Ankara to ‘increase its area of influence’ in energy exploration.
The US Export-Import Bank approved a $526 million loan to Guyana for the construction of a 300 MW natural gas-fired power plant that would use ExxonMobil’s associated gas production from the Stabroek block, staving off intense Chinese competition.
With 12 years overdue and four times the originally planned budget with a price tag of €13 billion, the Flamanville 3 nuclear reactor was finally connected to France’s power grid this week, marking the first addition of new nuclear capacity since Civaux-2 in 1999.
India’s state-controlled refiner Bharat Petroleum (NSE:BPCL) announced its plans to invest $11 billion in a new refinery in southern Andhra Pradesh state, adding 180,000 b/d of