Oil Prices Tumble as Brent slumps to $74 per barrel

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Brent slumps back to $74 per barrel and WTI fall to within touching distance of the $70 mark, OilPrice.com reports.

This followed ten heated days of geopolitical speculation, the risk of seeing the Israel-Iran standoff degenerate into an oil price rally is evaporating.

Indeed, Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed to strike military targets and not oil ones. This has brought macroeconomics back into the limelight with OPEC cutting its 2025 forecast again and China continuing to report weak import numbers.

The US Treasury and State Departments slapped sanctions on 23 tankers and 16 entities involved in the ghost fleet enabling Iranian crude oil flows to China, expected to lower the 1.6 million b/d of oil flowing to China’s teapot refiners in Shandong.

For the third consecutive month, OPEC slashed its forecast for global crude oil demand growth in both 2024 and 2025 to reflect weaker Chinese consumption, however even now its annual increment is above consensus at 1.93 million b/d.

China’s national oil company PetroChina (SHA:601857) will no longer be a committed shipper on the 590,000 b/d Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline after it had assigned its contract to another party, without naming the recipient of its term capacity.

The 313,000 b/d Deer Park refinery operated by Mexico’s state oil firm Pemex discharged some 43,500 pounds of highly toxic hydrogen sulfide gas into the atmosphere, several hours after a deadly incident that killed two contract workers.

According to Iraqi officials, the country produced 3.94 million b/d of oil in September, less than its 4 million b/d OPEC+ output target for the first time this year, although it seems to be based on the debatable claim that Kurdistan halved its production to 140,000 b/d.

Japan is considering ramping up purchases of LNG for emergency needs to at least 12 cargoes per year from its current pace of 3 cargoes annually, equivalent to more than 0.6 million tonnes of LNG of additional demand to safeguard against price shocks.

A Norwegian appeals court had ruled in favor of the government against environmental activist groups that sought to halt three upcoming oil projects – Yggdrasil, Tyrving, and Breidablikk – boosting the production outlook of Equinor and Aker BP.

Tension is piling up around the world’s largest zinc smelter Korea Zinc after buyout investment firm MBK Partners bought a 5.34% stake in the company amidst a multi-billion-dollar succession feud, eyeing a future takeover of operations.

China’s new energy vehicle sales reached 1.29 million units last month, up 17% month-over-month and 42% year-over-year, with the new record high indicating Beijing’s stimulus measures might stimulate non-fossil cars more than conventional ones.

US upstream firm ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) has received a US government license to recoup the almost $10 billion owed by Venezuela, enabling it to pursue legal action against PDVSA in countries where the latter holds financial assets.

The Democratic Republic of Congo canceled a licensing round for 27 oil blocks it launched two years ago, citing weak competition and inappropriate offers, easing fears that oil drilling could expand into Africa’s second-largest rainforest.

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim confirmed that the country’s state oil company Petronas would continue oil and gas exploration activities in the South China Sea, defying recent dissatisfactory remarks from China.

Chinese power generation manufacturer Dongfang Electric (SHA:600875) rolled out a wind turbine with a capacity of 26 MW, surpassing any existing or announced model and beating the previous record capacity of 18 MW by a wide margin.