The Jan’25 Brent futures saw an interesting trend this afternoon as price action initially rose from the $71/bbl level at 13:00 GMT, creating a triple top pattern near $71.90/bbl before falling lower to $71.35/bbl by 17:30 GMT (time of writing). Alongside reports of PetroChina’s plan to shut its largest refinery in 2025, the Jan’25 contract tested the $71.90/bbl level on multiple occasions throughout the afternoon. However, crude oil prices ultimately failed to sustainably stay above this level, amid a removal of some of the geopolitical risk premium previously supporting oil prices. In the news today, state-owned PetroChina is projected to shut its Dalian Petrochemical plant in 2025, which accounts for 410kb/d, or 3%, of the total Chinese refinery output, according to Reuters. In other news, Chinese oil and gas exploration company CNOOC reported a net profit of $5.2 billion for Q3’24, up by 9% y/y from 2023. In the first nine months of 2024, CNOOC made 9 new discoveries and appraised 23 oil and gas-bearing structures. In other news, IndianOil, the biggest refiner in India, has released its Q2’24 results, showing that the company’s net profit fell by 98.6% y/y, partly influenced by low fuel demand in the monsoon season. At the time of writing, the front-month (Jan/Feb’25) and six-month (Jan/Jul’25) Brent futures spreads are at $0.34/bbl and $0.92/bbl, respectively.
