- Oil trades lower as the market weighs the impending Russian supply cut against supply recovery
- March ’23 WTI lost nearly 70c to trade at around $79/Bbl
- The market awaits the January CPI report, which will be released on Tuesday
- Flows from Turkey’s Ceyhan port resumed on Monday, the first since the devastating earthquakes in the region on February 6
- Production also resumed at Norway’s largest oil field last week after an outage halted 0.5 MMBbl/d of loadings
- Russia said on Friday that it would cut output by 0.5 MMBbl/d in March
- Concerning global crude supply, UAE Energy Minister Al Mazrouei said there is no need for an early OPEC+ meeting as he believes the crude market is “balanced” (BBG)
- A slightly stronger US Dollar weighed on prices this week
- A stronger dollar (DXY Index) can cause foreign buyers of dollar-denominated commodities to pay more for the same amount of goods
- OPEC+ does not need to hold extraordinary meetings as the oil market is balanced, according to UAE Energy Minister Sahail Al Mazrouei (Bloomberg)
- In October 2022, OPEC+ members decided to maintain their production targets through 2023 after lowering oil output by 2 MMBbl/d
- Mazrouei further said that the group intends to continue with this agreement unless " we have something that would shake the market….and we haven’t seen that”
- The bloc also indicated to maintain output despite Russia’s plans to cut production by 0.5 MMBbl/d in March