- West Texas Intermediate dropped below $63.50 on Thursday morning, the lowest level since May 20th
- The U.S. Federal Reserve signaled it was ready to start tapering asset purchases within a month, helping the dollar and hurting currencies (Bloomberg)
- Iran has nearly doubled its uranium enrichment, moving Tehran close to levels required for nuclear weapons
- The U.S. dollar hit a nine-month high on Thursday as traders and investors weighed a likely reduction in U.S. stimulus (WSJ)
- Fed minutes from their July meeting, released Wednesday, showed that the bank would likely start scaling back the $120 billion in monthly purchases of Treasury and mortgage securities at one of the three remaining policy meetings in 2021
- Several officials are split on the timing of when to start reducing asset purchases. Some members favor quick actions in order to position the Fed to potentially raise interest rates if the economy strengthens further next year. Others believe the Fed could wait in order to observe stronger evidence of a healed job market
- Saudi Arabia, OPEC+’s co-leader, is probably considering a postponement of planned supply increases, according to energy consultant Energy Aspects (Bloomberg)
- In an Aug. 16 note, Energy Aspects said, “Given the recent sell-off, Riyadh is likely thinking about whether to push for a short pause on upcoming quota increases from October amid the demand concerns related to the delta variant.”
- AEGIS notes that other prominent energy analysts mentioned similar potential action from OPEC+ after the IEA and OPEC showed a loser supply and demand balance for 2022 in their monthly reports