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First Look - Turkey looks to revive Syria's oil industry

Oil is heading for a small weekly gain
- WTI prices have rebounded slightly this morning and are pushing back above $70/Bbl after falling yesterday
- The API estimates that US crude inventories fell by 3.2 MMBbls last week, ahead of the official data release later this morning
Turkey looks to increase Syrian oil production (BBG)
- Turkey’s energy minister recently spoke about increasing investment into Syria following the culmination of the civil war
- Current oil production is around 30 MBbl/d, which is about 5% of the levels seen 20 years ago
- Long-term cooperation could lead to new oil and gas pipelines being built as well as new investments into drilling operations

Natural gas for January (set to expire today) rose 11c to $3.85 in early morning trading
- The move higher comes as weather models, after days of disagreement, come into more agreement for cold between day 8 and day 15 of the forecast
- The European Ensemble gained 22 HDDs since yesterday, while the composite 24-hour change gained 13.4 HDDs (CWG)
The EIA is expected to announce a 99 Bcf withdrawal from underground storage, according to the average Bloomberg survey
- This compares to last year’s pull of 87 Bcf and a five-year draw of 127 Bcf
- The early read for the week ending December 27 is about a 130 Bcf pull from inventories
- AEGIS expects inventories to land at 1.9 Tcf in March ahead of the withdrawal season