After initial strength this afternoon, the Jan’25 Brent futures contract ultimately saw weakness this afternoon, moving from $72.45/bbl at 12:00 GMT up to $73.20/bbl 14:20 GMT down to $72.05/bbl at 17:45 GMT (time of writing). EIA data released today at 16:00 GMT for the week to 8 Nov showed a build of 2.09mb in US crude oil inventories, with US gasoline inventories falling to their lowest levels since Nov 2022. In the news today, according to a Reuters report, a senior Lebanese official Ali Hassan Khalil said Lebanon was ready to implement UN Security Council resolution 1701, which ended a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Channel 12 has reported that a response from Lebanon to a ceasefire proposal sent to Beirut from the US could come within the next 24 hours. Meanwhile, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister, told Reuters “we are at a point that we are closer to an arrangement than we have been since the start of the war”. In other news, Norway’s oil investment has hit an all-time high, estimated at $22.9 billion for this year compared to the previous record of $20.4 billion in 2014, Statistics Norway stated in its Q4’24 survey of companies’ investment plans. At the time of writing, the Jan/Feb’25 and Jan/Jul’25 Brent futures spreads stand at $0.30/bbl and $1.14/bbl, respectively.
