The July Brent future flat price has been well-supported this afternoon, initially rising from $82.60/bbl handles at 12:00 BST to $83.75/bbl by 14:35 BST. Subsequently, price action turned negative, with Brent falling to $83/bbl by 16:15 BST, from which it retraced up to its current level of $83.15 at 17:15 BST (time of writing). Rain has stalled the large wildfire near the Canadian oil sands city of Fort McMurray and is not expected to advance during wet weather forecast for the next few days, according to the local authority. Foreign firms in Venezuela are flooding the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) with requests for licenses that will allow them to operate after May 31 after Washington reimposed sanctions last month. Oil and gas producer Crescent Energy will acquire rival SilverBow Resources in a $2.1 billion deal, creating the second-largest operator in the Eagle Ford Basin in Texas, a move that comes amid an ongoing wave of consolidation in the US energy sector that triggered $250 billion of deals in 2023. Consumption of petroleum energy products in France is up 11% y-o-y in April 2024, with deliveries of road fuels having increased by 9.9% to 4.087 million cubic metres, representing a 0.7% increase YTD. The front and 6-month spreads are $0.42/bbl and $3.03/bbl, respectively.
