The Nov’24 Brent futures contract recorded a weaker afternoon ahead of Oct’24 Brent’s expiry today. The Nov’24 flat price dropped from $79/bbl at noon to $76.70/bbl at 15:00 BST. Prices found more support here and firmed up to $77.25/bbl at 17:25 BST (time of writing). OPEC+ is reportedly set to proceed with their planned increase in oil output from October, multiple sources from the producer group told Reuters. The plan includes an output boost of 180kb/d in October by eight OPEC+ members and is part of a larger plan to begin unwinding their recent layer of output cuts equalling 2.2mb/d while keeping other cuts in place until the end of 2025. In other news, a poll of 37 analysts and economists surveyed by Reuters over the past fortnight forecast that Brent futures would average $82.86/bbl in 2024 – recording a fourth cut in Reuters’ estimates (July: $83.66/bbl). In macroeconomic news, US consumer spending increased 0.5% in July’24 (prev: 0.3%) while the PCE, the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, increased by 0.2% in July’24 (June: 0.2%), up 2.5% y/y. Finally, at the time of writing, the Nov/Dec’24 and Nov/May’25 Brent futures spreads stood at $0.80/bbl and $2.45/bbl, respectively.
