Headlines
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Platinum goes up ahead of Johnson Matthey today’s report
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Weak economic outlook weighs on base metals
Brent and Distillates
On Tuesday morning Brent remains around 50$/b as fears mounted that the worsening global economic slump is trimming fuel demand.
Yesterday OPEC said that “the rising risk of a prolonged global economic recession, with further downward uncertainties for oil demand growth continues to undermine market sentiment” and cut its forecast for demand growth next year to 500kb/d, down from previous 800 kb/d.
OPEC ministers are considering meeting on November 29 in Cairo ahead of its next scheduled meeting on December 17, Iran's OPEC governor Mohammad Ali Khatibi said last week.
Pirates, believed to be from Somalia, seized control of the Sirius Star, which is owned by Saudi Aramco on Saturday, 450 nautical miles south-east of the Kenyan port of Mombasa. It is estimated that the tanker was holding more than a quarter of the daily exports from Saudi Arabia. The oil would have been worth about 100 mln.$ at Monday’s market price but is probably of little interest to the pirates.
China completed plans for the second-phase development of its strategic petroleum reserve program, which will have a storage capacity of 26.8 mln.m3 (i.e.168.6 mln.bbl), the country's top economic planning agency National Development and Reform Commission said. The announcement was made along with the Chinese central government's decision to start construction of a slew of energy-related projects in the coming year, including a 10 mln.t/y (i.e.200 kb/d) greenfield refinery in southwestern Sichuan province. The project is in addition to a 800 kt/y ethylene plant and other downstream facilities the state-controlled oil giant has been developing since 2006.
DOE and IEA changed their forecasts of oil demand growth in 2009. As they expect lower economic outlook IEA, cuts its 2009 demand forecast by 670kb/d and DOE cut it by a whole 1 mln.b/d. IEA now expects will growth by 350 kb/d in 2009 and DOE forecasts no demand growth at all. On the contrary OPEC expects 760 kb/d demand growth next year.
