MOSCOW (MRC) -- Oil prices rose on Friday after an unexpected fall in the monthly US jobless rate and OPEC’s decision to bring forward to Saturday discussions on whether to extend record production cuts, reported Reuters.
Brent crude futures were up USD2.40, or 6.0%, at USD42.39 a barrel as of 1243 GMT. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose USD2.05, or 5.48%, to USD39.46 a barrel.
The US Labor Department showed a surprise fall in the jobless rate to 13.3% last month from 14.7% in April.
Brent has risen 17% since Friday to reach a three-month high, settling in a range more comfortable for producers like Russia. The contract has more than doubled since it crashed to as low as USD15.98 a barrel on April 22.
WTI is up 11% from last Friday’s close, leaving benchmarks on track for a sixth week of gains, lifted by the output cuts and signs of improving fuel demand as countries ease lockdown measures imposed to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus.
Russia’s energy ministry said on Friday a video conference of a group of leading oil producers, known as OPEC+, would be held on Saturday.
The market was hopeful that some laggard countries may have agreed to align themselves with the deal.
OPEC+ had said they would bring forward the meeting, which had been scheduled for next week, should Iraq and others agree to boost their adherence to existing supply cuts.
“Prices are up with the meeting scheduled for tomorrow. There was lots of confusion ... so it looks like they found a way forward,” Olivier Jakob at Petromatrix consultancy said.
Two OPEC+ sources said Saudi Arabia and Russia had agreed to extend the deeper cuts until the end of July but said Riyadh was also pushing to extend them until the end of August.
If OPEC+ fails to agree to roll over the current output curbs, that would mean the cut could drop back to 7.7 million bpd from July through December as previously agreed.
Adding support was the first tropical storm of the season in the US Gulf of Mexico. Storm Cristobal is expected to enter the central Gulf this week, an area rich with offshore platforms, and could see landfall along Louisiana’s refinery row on Sunday.
US energy companies have already closed some production. “It’s not big, but there will be some shut-ins,” Jakob said.
As MRC informed previously, global oil consumption cut by up to a third in Q1 2020. What happens next in the oil market depends on how quickly and completely the global economy emerges from lockdown, and whether the recessionary hit lingers through the rest of this year and into 2021.
Earlier this year, BP said the deadly coronavirus outbreak could cut global oil demand growth by 40 per cent in 2020, putting pressure on Opec producers and Russia to curb supplies to keep prices in check.
We remind that, in September 2019, six world's major petrochemical companies in Flanders, Belgium, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and the Netherlands (Trilateral Region) announced the creation of a consortium to jointly investigate how naphtha or gas steam crackers could be operated using renewable electricity instead of fossil fuels. The Cracker of the Future consortium, which includes BASF, Borealis, BP, LyondellBasell, SABIC and Total, aims to produce base chemicals while also significantly reducing carbon emissions. The companies agreed to invest in R&D and knowledge sharing as they assess the possibility of transitioning their base chemical production to renewable electricity.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 721,290 tonnes in the first four month of 2020, up by 4% year on year. Low density polyethylene (LDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments grew partially because of the increased capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market totalled 347,440 tonnes in January-April 2020 (calculated by the formula production minus export plus import). Supply exclusively of PP random copolymer increased.
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