Although Crude oil started Tuesday morning by extended a five-day winning streak as signals from OPEC officials imply that the oil production cut deal agreed last December could be extended further, breaking news that President Donald Trump announced that he fired national security adviser John Bolton has tanked the markets trading lower.
WTI crude oil was trading around $58.60 a barrel before falling off precipitously to $57.30 upon the announcement that Bolton had been fired.
Prior to Trump’s announcement, oil markets were moving higher on Tuesday, marking their longest run of gains since late July. The commodity had been climbing on the updated outlook from Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s new energy minister and a veteran member of the Saudi delegation to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which stated that the kingdom’s policy would not materially differ and a global deal to slash oil production by 1.2 million barrels per day would be maintained.
“Clearly, the Kingdom wants higher oil prices … Prince Abdulaziz made clear that ‘no radical’ change in the Saudi oil policy is forthcoming,” said Tamas Varga of oil brokerage PVM.
“It will be interesting to see if we get any hint from him whether the producer group in general and Saudi Arabia in particular sees the need for deeper production cuts.”
OPEC Crude Oil Plans
OPEC and its partners are meeting on Thursday to consider the next steps in the supply control arrangement.
There have been worries about producers’ adherence to the agreement as OPEC members Iraq and Nigeria, among others, overshot their quota in August and Russia also did not fully adhere to the agreement.
“Markets will need to see concrete progress on the production front, even as the world’s economy slows, to sustain gains,” said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at OANDA.
As a result, Goldman Sachs lowered its forecast on 2019 oil demand growth to 1 million barrels per day (bpd), down 100,000 bpd, but left its 2020 demand growth estimate broadly unchanged at 1.4 million bpd.
“Our oil supply-demand outlook for 2020 calls for additional OPEC production cuts to keep inventories near normal,” Goldman analysts wrote in a note.
Investors looking at oil ETFs to play the market for continued potential gains could look into United States Oil Fund (USO), the VelocityShares 3x Long Crude Oil ETN (UWT), and the ProShares Ultra Bloomberg Crude Oil (UCO).
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