The October Brent futures flat price has been decimated this afternoon, falling from $79.70/bbl at 12:10 BST to a low of $76.75/bbl at 15:40 BST, before it retraced marginally up to $76.90/bbl by 17:30 BST (time of writing). After 150 years in California, Chevron has announced it will be relocating its global HQ to Houston from the San Francisco Bay area, with Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom’s hostility to the fossil-fuel industry a key catalyst in the move. Slovakia and Hungary have rebuffed the EU’s calls to replace lost Russian oil will non-Russian oil sourced through Croatia’s JANAF Adriatic pipeline. Nigeria’s state oil firm NNPC has sold its first three cargoes of its new light, sweet crude grade Utapate to Spain’s Repsol and Dubai-based Gulf Transport and Trading (GTT). The new grade has an API gravity of 43.7 and a sulphur content of 0.065% and the first cargo of 950kb was loaded onto the Front Seoul tanker on 17 July, destined for Bilbao. Finally, US Non-Farm Payrolls came in well below expectations at 114k (ex. 175k), putting pressure on Fed chairman Jerome Powell to cut rates even more aggressively by the end of 2024. At the time of writing, front and 6-month spreads are $0.54/bbl and $2.18/bbl, respectively.
