The angry mutterings at the Permian Basin Petroleum Association’s “Spring Swing” golf tournament this week weren’t all about missed putts or lost balls. The Texas oilmen on the fairways had a more serious concern: The president they helped elect was tanking oil prices.
The plunge in oil prices over the past week was more severe than the market’s dynamics justify, and the drop may be short-lived, according to Canadian energy executives gathered in Toronto.
Leaders of oil and gas producers as well as pipeline companies characterized the sudden decline — sparked by US President Donald Trump’s global tariffs and OPEC’s surprise decision to revive output more quickly than expected — as more of a shock reaction than a reflection of actual supply-and-demand imbalances.
The oil industry in Alberta is bracing for difficult times ahead, with WTI prices crashing to $60 per barrel and uncertainties about oil demand growing in a world of trade and tariff wars.
Last week, the tariffs announced by the Trump Administration and the decision by OPEC+ producers to add in May more barrels to the market than expected crushed oil prices, with WTI Crude, the U.S. benchmark, crashing to $60 per barrel—the lowest level in four years.
Oil prices plunged this week as a one-two punch of sweeping U.S. import tariffs and an unexpected OPEC+ supply hike erased $10 per barrel from global benchmarks.
The price slump in crude oil that began last week has extended into this one as market players’ fears about a global recession deepen.
At the time of writing, Brent crude was trading at just below $64 per barrel, while West Texas Intermediate was changing hands for $60.54 per barrel, both down by over 2% from Friday’s close.
Last week, crude oil prices took a 7% dive after China announced retaliatory tariffs for U.S. imports, matching the U.S. rate of 34% on top of existing levies. The move was universally seen as bearish for crude oil, hence the effect on prices.
Saudi Arabia slashed its flagship oil price by the most in more than two years, just days after the OPEC+ alliance announced an unexpectedly large output hike.
State producer Saudi Aramco will lower Arab Light crude to its biggest buyers in Asia by $2.30 a barrel for May, according to a price list seen by Bloomberg.
Crude oil prices slumped by 3% earlier this year as traders digested the barrage of tariffs that President Trump unleashed on U.S. trade partners. Between 10% and 34% for the biggest trade partners of the United States, the tariffs are expected to affect demand for pretty much everything, including energy commodities.
The US is threatening to further tighten the screws on Russia. A group of 50 Republican and Democratic senators introduced a sanctions package that would hit the third-largest oil producer and countries that buy its fuel if President Vladimir Putin refuses to engage in good-faith ceasefire negotiations with Ukraine or if he breaches any eventual agreement.
Most market attention at the moment remains focused on Trump’s plan to announce sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs later on Wednesday, with no details, creating a situation that has the market guessing and preparing to panic over the prospect of a global trade war.
Six people directly involved in physical North Sea oil and derivatives trading said that the heightened volumes bore the hallmarks of a trader having their positions stopped out. The term means that either the trades were closed involuntarily, or that they triggered a preset threshold requiring them to be closed.