Trump told the “Fox and Friends” news program that attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman has “probably got essentially Iran written all over it”, citing video evidence that U.S. officials said was an Iranian patrol boat removing an un-exploded mine from the ‘Kokuka Courageous’ oil tanker on Friday. The Thursday attacks sent global crude prices sharply higher, but gains were pared the following day amid increasing concern that the U.S.-China trade war, alongside swelling global supplies, will hit both demand and prices in the months ahead.
“Crude oil experienced a tug-of-war week with Mideast tensions only partly offsetting continued worries about global demand and rising US stocks,” said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank .”With no end in sight for a solution to the US-China trade war, the global growth implications continue to negatively impact the outlook for crude oil, which hit a four-month low this week.”
“The failure to build a geopolitical risk premium following the tanker attacks in the Gulf of Oman could indicate that the market is either sceptical of the narrative with regards to who did it, or that demand worries simply weigh too heavily at this stage,” he added.
Brent crude contracts for August delivery, the global benchmark, were last seen 70 cents higher on the Friday session at $62.01 per barrel, but will close out the week with a 2% decline.
WTI contracts for July, which are more tightly linked to U.S. gas prices, were marked 23 cents higher at $52.51 per barrel into the close of trading, after hitting the lowest levels in than five months on Wednesday, and will end the week 2.7% to the downside.
Gulf tensions certainly have the potential to send oil prices higher again next week, given that around a fifth of the world’s oil passes through the nearby Strait of Hormuz, which separates the Persian Gulf states from Iran and the epicenter of military tensions between Washington and Tehran, each year.
Furthermore, OPEC members, as well as allies such as Russia, are likely to extend their pact to limit production, which is taking 1.2 million barrels of crude from the market each day, into the second half of the year when they meet later this month in Vienna.
However, with China’s industrial economy running at the weakest pace in seventeen years, and U.S. drilling pumping a record 13 million barrel each day, the downdraft for global oil markets looks powerful.
U.S. oil prices have fallen more than 22% since late April, reversing a run that began on Christmas Eve and took prices to multi-year highs, as investors began to question the strength of global crude demand as the world’s biggest economies saw slowing growth amid the ongoing U.S.-China trade dispute.
The International Energy Agency cut its 2019 demand growth forecast Friday to 1.2 million barrels per day, noting that “the main focus is on oil demand as economic sentiment weakens”, and adding that a “worsening trade outlook” was a common theme around the regions it covered in its monthly outlook report.
Those views were echoed by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which said Wednesday that U.S. supplies rose by 2.21 million barrels in the week ending June 7 to take the overall supply tally to 485.47 million barrels, the highest in nearly two years.
The United States Oil Fund LP (USO) was unchanged in after-hours trading Friday. Year-to-date, USO has declined -8.91%, versus a 8.83% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.
USO currently has an ETF Daily News SMART Grade of A (Strong Buy), and is ranked #1 of 109 ETFs in the Commodity ETFs category.
This article is brought to you courtesy of TheStreet.
