The comments yesterday, the change of tone from Saudi Arabia, is still an element, the market is still reacting to that.

Olivier Jakob

Categorized in : Energy

Today we start with a different set of headlines that they came to some agreement on the framework, that is definitely what is supporting prices.

Crude oil does not want to price a geopolitical premium, with the lack of strong economic data it is difficult to develop a bullish theme.

Demand is soft, generally, market participants find the market is fairly well balanced and don't seem to be too concerned about any potential supply disruptions.

Extending the cut by six or nine months, it doesn't really matter if the level stays the same, if you really wanted to target stock levels, you would need deeper cuts but Saudi Arabia has already gone beyond its cut target.

They really have started to make the shift, india is comfortable with a regular flow from the U.S. now.

Overall, we continue to trade a waiting game for the U.S. decision on Iran, waiting to have sanction headlines trigger some frenzied buying.

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It's difficult to say if there is one consensus move to another platform, it will take time.

This week has been pretty much a technical market, i don't think there has been any strong reversal in the fundamentals.

Right now, there is not much to be optimistic about, we have to wait a little bit longer for the rebalancing.

Unless the weekly report can show some larger stock changes we expect a low-volume environment to continue tomorrow and Friday.

Asia has been relatively weak and China is not providing much support, without the support of the products and with a structure in crude oil that is weakening, it is difficult to think that crude can break away to the upside.

Not everybody wants to be caught up in that, so they will avoid it, the refineries will walk away from it.

Globally, there are still a lot of supply disruptions and this comes on top of natural declines, it does bring forward the expected rebalancing in the second half.

(Saudi oil minister Ali) Al-Naimi will have lost credibility with Russia and will have as well upset other OPEC and Gulf countries.

Under those conditions, if the 200-day moving average is broken, we expect to see more speculative flows coming into crude oil.

If it is not clear if the strike will last long and will have any meaningful impact on exports or domestic production (including refineries), it does illustrate further the amount of pain that (Gulf) oil producers are also facing at current price levels.

We are leaving the period of low demand and starting to move toward the period when demand increases over the summer.

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For now, the market is staying well supported, and the dollar is providing additional support, it will be difficult to return to the lows of the year.

For now, the( oil) market is staying well supported, and the dollar is proving additional support, it will be difficult to return to the lows of the year.