The Feb’25 Brent futures contract initially saw weakness this afternoon, falling from $73.60/bbl at 12:00 GMT down to $72.45/bbl around 16:10 GMT, before recovering to $73.65/bbl at 17:30 GMT (time of writing). Crude oil prices were elevated amid reports that Israel is preparing for potential strikes against Iranian nuclear infrastructure, according to The Times of Israel. In the news today, the Kremlin has stated that Russian President Putin backs Hungarian Prime Minister Orban’s efforts to achieve a Christmas ceasefire in Ukraine and a major exchange of prisoners of war, as per Reuters. In other news, Saudi Arabia plans to ship 46mb of crude oil to China in January, the highest volume since October and significantly higher than the 36.5mb of volume expected in December, as per Reuters. Sinopec and PetroChina is expected to lift more crude, as well as non-state owned refiners Rongsheng Petrochemical and Shenghong Petrochemical. Finally, Germany’s oil product sales increased 6.2% y/y to 7.602 million tons in September, with heating oil recording the highest rise of 45.9% y/y to 1.114 million tons and jet fuel seeing the biggest decline of 18.7% y/y to 0.714 million tons, according to BAFA. At the time of writing, the Feb/Mar’25 and Feb/Aug’25 Brent futures spreads stand at $0.39/bbl and $1.67/bbl, respectively.
