Oil prices rallied nicely earlier this week on optimism surrounding US-China trade war talks, but lessons here are never learned by the market, which is continually roped in by vague tweets hinting at a break in the tariff tit-for-tat. By Friday morning, that rally had ended ignominiously - as everyone should have expected. The end of the week’s rally was heralded by a US supply decline, coupled with those eternal Middle East tensions, which seem to have existed since the beginning of time and which won’t be changed much by a high-profile yet realistically insignificant tanker back-and-forth in the high seas.
Despite Friday’s oil price decline, oil prices are up on the week, with Brent gaining $1 per barrel. The rig count data expected later in the day is expected to show yet another decline in the number of rigs, especially in the Permian – an increasingly meaningless metric as US production continues to climb despite the loss in rigs.
Gazprom Gets Short End of LNG Stick - Again
Rosneft, Exxon, SODECO, and ONGC Videsh - partners in the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project in Russia - have decided to build their own LNG plant instead of selling the Sakhalin-1-derived oil to Gazprom as originally intended. Gazprom and the Sakhalin-1 group have been in talks regarding the project’s gas, but they have failed to come to any agreement regarding the price. Instead, the group will build its own LNG plant, capable of producing 6.2 million…
