God bless America; firing up WTI spreads like an AR and waking up in the morning on Wednesday and buying the hell out of Brent, flipping pricing like Vance’s opinion on Trump. We seem to always be returning to $85/bbl levels, like the ’85 classic Back to the Future; do we need to get back to reality…? It seems it will take more than an assassination attempt, a president sick with a disease he said was ‘over’, and disastrous Chinese data to break Brent out of the mid-eighties. Like the US in the mid-eighties, we are seeing some confusing supply-side economics in the States (alongside attempted assassinations). The EIA announced a crude draw of 4.87mb in US crude oil inventories compared to an estimate of a 1.08mb draw, but the refinery utilisation is down as product demand is poor. The 3-2-1 crack is living up to its name and slipping down as products fail to raise the flag. The crude physical diffs across the regions are the big winners this week. For the title of the big loser, being English I couldn’t possibly comment.
