The early exuberance in oil has faded today as WTI tumble to fresh one-month lows…
…crucially losing the key 40-week moving average once again as the downtrend looks set to continue.
With BNP Paribas warning that WTI is set to revisit the lows of the year:
Ahead of a producer gathering in Doha on 17 April aiming to freeze output, recent comments by Saudi Arabia indicate that the Kingdom’s participation is conditional on that of other producers, including Iran. That effectively puts a nail in the coffin of the Feb-Mar oil price rally.Iran will not accept a freeze of its output until such time that lost market share, due to US and EU sanctions, is reclaimed.
In the meantime, key non-OPEC producers like Russia are posting new record highs in output. A production freeze from Russia will not help tighten global oil balances.
Global oil balances will witness sizeable implied inventory builds in H1’16, suggesting that the price of oil can easily revisit the lows seen earlier this year.
The time for redeterminations looms large over a sector that has been bid up once again on hope that this time it’s different. It’s not.. and the glut only got bigger during this short-squeeze.
