OPEC member states should cut crude output to boost prices to a range of $70 to $80 a barrel, Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said.
“No one is happy” with prices at current levels, Zanganeh told reporters in Tehran.
“OPEC should decide to manage the market by reducing the level of production.” Even so, Zanganeh said he doesn’t expect the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to decide to reduce output when its ministers meet next in December.
Saudi Arabia is delaying payments to government contractors as the slump in oil prices pushes the country into a deficit for the first time since 2009, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
Companies working on infrastructure projects have been waiting six months or more for payments as the government seeks to preserve cash, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. Delays have increased this year and the government has also been seeking to cut prices on contracts, the people said.
Oil held near $47 a barrel after Chinese government data showed the economy expanded quicker than forecast in the world’s second-biggest crude user.
Futures were little changed in New York after advancing 1.9 percent Friday. Gross domestic product rose 6.9 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Crude advanced for the first time in five days on speculation that the falling number of rigs drilling for oil in the US will further curb output.
Futures climbed 1.9 percent in New York, trimming a weekly drop. Rigs targeting oil in the US fell to 595 this week, a five-year low, Baker Hughes Inc. said on its website. Schlumberger Ltd., the world’s largest oilfield services provider, sees oil supply and demand tightening, Chief Executive Officer Paal Kibsgaard said Friday.
Oil has retreated on signs the market remains oversupplied after trading above $50 a barrel last week for the first time since July. U.S. crude stockpiles increased the most in six months through Oct. 9, even as output fell, keeping inventories more than 100 million barrels above the five-year seasonal average, according to government data.
Canadian factory sales declined by 0.2 percent in August, and the first decline in four months was smaller than economists forecast with damage from falling energy prices curbed by gains for automakers.
The decline followed two months of 1.7 percent increases, and lowered sales to C$52.1 billion ($40.4 billion) from C$52.2 billion, Statistics Canada reported Friday from Ottawa. Economists forecast August sales would decline by 1 percent according to the median of a Bloomberg survey with 18 responses.
The oiliest county in Texas has seen its new natural gas production capacity more than double as drillers home in on their most profitable acreage.
The peak output rate from new gas wells in Karnes County has surged 134 percent since January, estimates from Drillinginfo show. The only other county in Texas’s Eagle Ford shale patch where new gas capacity’s gaining is Live Oak, about 50 miles southwest of Karnes, the Austin-based energy data provider said.
Gas producers are focusing on the most prolific parts of their plays as they grapple with the worst price collapse since 2008, and Karnes County has long been a sweet spot in Texas’s Eagle Ford formation. The 20,000-square-mile shale play supplies about one-sixth of the nation’s crude.
Three months ago, the head of Schlumberger Ltd. thought the industry had seen the worst of the US oil rout. Now he’s not so sure.
Chief Executive Officer Paal Kibsgaard said in July that a recovery might begin by the end of the year. That’s been delayed, Kibsgaard’s said in a statement Thursday as Schlumberger reported a 49 percent drop in third-quarter profit.
The market is "increasingly challenging with activity expected to be reduced further," Kibsgaard said.
US oil explorers idled rigs for a sixth week as they grapple with crude near $50 a barrel.
Rigs targeting oil in the US fell by 9 to 605, adding to the 61 sidelined in the previous five weeks and extending a five-year low, Baker Hughes Inc. said on its website Friday. Equipment put aside in the Permian Basin in West Texas led the decline.
"We were expecting a lot of the marginal vertical and directional rigs to start coming back out of the market, and that’s exactly what we saw this week," Matt Marietta, an analyst at Stephens Inc. in Houston, said. "Overall this is a trend I think is going to continue into year-end."
As Russian military planes pound Syria, the ruble, stocks and bonds are projecting an uncommon level of giddiness on the part of traders.
A week after Vladimir Putin embarked on air strikes on Islamic State, the attacks are infuriating Turkey, NATO calls them a “troubling escalation” and the U.K. says the Kremlin is making the situation in the region “much more dangerous.” Even so, the ruble is enjoying its best start to an October on record, and the RTS stock index is having its strongest showing in a decade.
The reason? Oil.
The correlation between Russia’s currency and the price of its main export is at an all-time high. Add to that the surge in appetite for emerging-market assets as traders push back the timing of an interest-rate increase by the Federal Reserve. Some investors are unfazed by Russia’s maneuvering in Syria or sanctions over its role in Ukraine.
From Oslo to Doha, Riyadh to Moscow, governments that rode crude’s historic rise to unprecedented wealth are now being forced to start repatriating their rainy- day funds just to make ends meet.
The halving of oil to less than $50 a barrel has the potential to alter one of the most powerful economic and political forces of the past half century: the rise of the petrostate. These countries led a surge in state investments in the U.S. and Europe that now totals about $7.3 trillion globally, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute.
During the last boom, the oil countries flaunted their wealth abroad by buying stakes in iconic companies such as Barclays Plc as well as trophy assets including Manhattan hotels, European soccer clubs and London luxury homes, often in the face of opposition from the local public.
Such swagger is fading.
Natural gas bulls are herding together.
Eight of 12 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg said they’re bullish about prices heading into next week. Contracts have rebounded 2.7 percent on the New York Mercantile Exchange since reaching a three-year low on Oct. 1.
Futures may have fallen about 20 cents in the last month, weighed down by a glut of domestic shale supplies and forecasts for a mild winter that could curb demand for the heating fuel. But traders and analysts say that’s old news.
Oil headed for the biggest weekly gain since August amid speculation an increase in demand will ease a global glut.
Futures climbed as much as 1 percent in New York and are up 9.4 percent this week. A “new capital discipline” in the industry will allow consumption to catch up with supply, boosting prices, Gary Ross, the founder and chairman of PIRA Energy Group, said Thursday.
World oil use will expand more than forecast this year, according to Abdalla Salem El-Badri, the secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Volkswagen’s top US executive has apologised as the emissions-rigging scandal engulfing the world’s largest carmaker deepened and members of Congress said the company violated the public’s trust.
“On behalf of our company, my colleagues in Germany and myself, I would like to offer a sincere apology for Volkswagen’s use of a software program that served to defeat the regular emissions testing regime,” Volkswagen of America chief executive Michael Horn told a House subcommittee.
Calling the company’s admission “deeply troubling”, Mr Horn said: “We have broken the trust of our customers, dealerships and employees, as well as the public and regulators.”
Saudi Arabia is ordering a series of cost- cutting measures as the slide in oil prices weighs on the kingdom’s budget, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
As Norway prepares to make the first withdrawals from its $820 billion wealth fund, the government is considering letting it take on riskier investments.
The Finance Ministry is looking into whether to boost the fund’s stock allocation to beyond 60 percent as the investor struggles with record low bond yields. The government is forming a panel to assess the impact of changing the limit that will report back in 2017.
A year after oil sank into a bear market, the industry is still hunkering down for a long period of low prices, with Europe’s biggest producer seeing only the first glimpses of a recovery.
In the last five months, US production sank by 590,000 barrels a day, or more than 6 percent. The bad news: Drillers are cutting costs with a speed and brutality not seen in decades, enabling many to continue producing at a high level even as prices remain low.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sees crude falling by another $10 a barrel as storage tanks fill up in the coming months.
“I see the first mixed signs for recovery,” said Ben Van Beurden, Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s chief executive officer, speaking at the Oil & Money conference in London.
Norway’s government will propose spending a record amount of its petroleum wealth to cover budget needs as it seeks to rescue the economy from the plunge in oil prices, according to state broadcaster NRK.
The minority coalition plans on spending a record 193 billion kroner ($23 billion) of oil income in 2016, up from an estimated 168.8 billion kroner this year, NRK reported, without citing where it got the information. That represents 2.8 percent of its wealth fund, the world’s biggest, NRK said. The government seeks to keep oil cash spending within 4 percent of the value of the fund. The budget will be revealed at 10 a.m. Wednesday in Oslo.
“The budget will be well-adapted to handle challenges both in the short and long term,” Finance Minister Siv Jensen said to reporters as she was leaving her house early Wednesday. It will be a “good” and “expansionary” spending plan, she said.
Brazil’s top electoral court agreed to open an investigation into allegations that President Dilma Rousseff illegally financed her re-election campaign. The charges could provide grounds for her removal from office along with Vice President Michel Temer.
Oil climbed to the highest level in a month amid speculation that falling crude production will ease the global supply glut.
Futures rose as much as 5.6 percent in London and 5.1 percent in New York. The first signs of recovery in the oil market are beginning to appear, Royal Dutch Shell Plc Chief Executive Officer Ben Van Beurden said at an industry conference in London Tuesday, though the company still plans for a long period of low prices. U.S. crude output fell 120,000 barrels a day in September, the Energy Information Administration said.
Oil has held near $45 a barrel for more than four weeks after plunging to a six-year low in August amid speculation a global glut will be prolonged. U.S. crude stockpiles remain about 100 million barrels above the five-year average, while OPEC continues to pump above its collective quota.
Even with commodities mired in the worst slump in a generation, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. are warning bulls that prices may stay lower for years.
Crude oil and copper are unlikely to rebound because of excess supplies, Goldman predicts, and Morgan Stanley forecasts that weaker currencies in producing countries will encourage robust output of raw materials sold for dollars, even during bear markets. Citigroup says the sluggish world economy makes it “hard to argue” that most prices have already bottomed.
The Bloomberg Commodity Index on Sept. 30 capped its worst quarterly loss since the depths of the recession in 2008. The economy in China, the biggest consumer of grains, energy and metals, is expanding at the slowest pace in two decades just as producers struggle to ease surpluses. Alcoa Inc., once a symbol of American industrial might, plans to split itself in two, while Chesapeake Energy Corp. cut its workforce by 15 percent. Caterpillar Inc. may shed 10,000 jobs as demand slows for mining and energy equipment.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc is “puling out all the stops to safeguard” its dividend in a world where oil prices remain “lower for longer,” chief executive officer Ben Van Beurden said.
Hedge funds trimmed bullish oil bets for the first time in six weeks, losing faith in a swift recovery as Russia boosted output to the highest since the Soviet Union collapsed.
Colombia is importing crude for the first time in more than two years as South America’s third-largest crude producer capitalizes on an abundance of higher-quality light grades on the global market.
