Despite the dramatic reaction of oil markets to news that the OPEC+ meeting would be postponed, oil prices are set to end the week with little real change as traders now await the outcome of the November 30th meeting. 

The seesawing in oil prices seen over the past weeks has wound down as the market awaits the OPEC meeting, postponed from this week to November 30 and changed from an in-person summit to an online event. ICE Brent front-month futures have settled within a narrow frame of $81-83 per barrel the entire week, with the Thanksgiving holidays in the US keeping the main developments firmly focused on the Eurasian landscape. A better outlook for China’s property sector was offset by higher US inventories, so OPEC+ will be the trendsetter for the next weeks’ pricing direction.   

OPEC meets online after quota spat. The upcoming meeting of OPEC+ has been postponed to November 30 amidst speculation that the renegotiation of African producers’ production quotas has been met with notable resistance whilst other members of the group defy calls to chip in with cuts. 

Russia sells all its crude above price cap. Russian government authorities have declared that the country’s oil exporters are selling almost all of their exported crude above the Western-imposed price cap of $60 per barrel, replacing a sizeable chunk of European shippers and insurance. 

Oil spill forces Gulf producers to shut. More than 60,000 b/d of crude production has been shut in the US Gulf of Mexico, equivalent to 3% of the region’s output, following Third Coast Infrastructure’s underwater pipeline leak, impacting Occidental Petroleum, Talos Energy and others. 

Fossil subsidies rise despite COP28 looming. Despite the global community’s pledges to cut “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies at previous COP summits, the IMF estimates that the global tally of such subsidies soared from $2 trillion to $7 trillion over the past two years, on the back of rising energy prices.

/OilPrice/