The Jan’25 Brent futures contract has weakened this afternoon, falling from $73.05/bbl at 12:00 GMT to $72.45/bbl at 17:50 GMT (time of writing). EIA data for the week to 22 Nov showed a larger-than-expected draw of 1.84mb in US crude oil inventories, compared to a build of 0.5mb the prior week. In the news today, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned the US today to halt a “spiral of escalation” over Ukraine, stating “you mustn’t supply Kyiv with everything they want”, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, Russian state news agency TASS quoted an official saying Moscow was working to put its Sarmat ICBM, part of its strategic nuclear arsenal, on combat duty. In other news, the Kazakh Energy Ministry has proposed widening the current six-month ban on fuel exports to gasoline, jet fuel and bitumen, starting January 2025, according to Interfax. Finally, Prax is continuing to work toward buying Shell’s minority stake in the Schwedt oil refinery in east Germany, as per Bloomberg. The shareholder structure of the Schwedt refinery has been complicated by the involvement of Russia’s Rosneft, whose stake was seized by the German government. At the time of writing, the Jan/Feb’25 and Jan/Jul’25 Brent futures spreads stand at $0.60/bbl and $1.68/bbl, respectively.
