After selling off overnight to around $72.25/bbl following Israel’s Friday night retaliation against Iran for their 01 Oct attack, the Jan’25 Brent futures contract has seen further weakness this morning, moving from $72.55/bbl at 07:00 GMT down to $71.10/bbl at 10:20 GMT (time of writing). Crude oil prices declined as Israel’s attack left Iranian nuclear and oil infrastructure unscathed, easing fears of a potential supply disruption. In the news today, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Iran will “use all available tools” to respond to the Israeli attack on Iran’s military infrastructure, as per Reuters. In other news, India’s Bharat Petroleum has stated that its Russian oil intake for crude processing has fallen to 34% between July and September this year due to maintenance of units at its Bina and Kochi refineries. The state-run company has a production capacity of about 706kb/d across its three refineries in India, according to a Reuters report. Finally, according to Libya’s National Oil Corporation, Eni and BP have resumed exploration in the Libyan Ghadames Basin, where onshore drilling has been halted since 2014. Meanwhile, Repsol is preparing to restart drilling in the Murzuq Basin, and OMV is to begin operations in the Sirte Basin in the coming weeks. At the time of writing, the front-month (Jan/Feb’25) and six-month (Jan/Jul’25) Brent futures spreads are at $0.31/bbl and $0.85/bbl, respectively.
