The Officials

Yesterday, $68 looked like a floor until the evening, but in late trading it began to look like a new ceiling. Although Brent surged through the window, it couldn’t quite breach the $68 level again, reaching the close at $67.86/bbl. Despite the flat price decline, the prompt spread has been zooming upwards! It’s even broken the 50c barrier for the first time since 3 September! You know what that means – there is demand for crude right now. The stars are aligning for the eventual pop!

Forties is finally heading to Asia! About time, since the Forties curve is very depressed. However, we’ve not seen any bids or offers for the grade since September 11 and the value is gradually rolling up the contango curve. Freight has been keeping a lid on things but finally buyers stepped in guess what happened? “Freight markets are going crazy” in the words of a trader. You need to be a multimillionaire to secure a ship!

The market likes gossip and is often happier to react to rumour than official communique. Transneft denied the idea Russia will cut back on oil production due to Ukrainian drone attacks but the market remains comfortably above $68 this morning… It’s “fake news!” but the price tells the ultimate truth.

The market was on fire on the rumours of cutting Russian production, facing the onslaught of Ukrainian drones hitting infrastructure! Brent flat price surged from barely holding its head above the $67 line in the morning to a monumental $68.32/bbl by the European close! Although flat price was booming to its highest since 2 September, the prompt spread lagged and struggled to rise in unison. It did manage to rise to 44c by the close, however, it was just up 3c from yesterday.

Volumes continue rising but remain down on a yearly basis!

China’s third batch of clean product export quotas came out and holy mama! Total volume for clean fuel exports (gasoline, gasoil and kerosene) is said to be xxxx million mt, more or less aligned with the market’s expectations. On the clean product front, Sinopec’s quota was 3 million mt, while PetroChina got 3.05 million mt.

Shouting doesn’t stop wars… No matter how red the orange hue turns, the Russians and Ukrainians continue to drop bombshells on each other. The latest on Ukraine’s hit list is now the Kirishi refinery, which will reportedly take 2 months to fix! Talking of refinery outages, Pernis isn’t the only one out going action in NWE, as IIR confirmed that Total’s Antwerp refinery is reaching the end of its sequential shutdown, with numerous units now offline. These refinery disruptions are hitting the crude market hard, seriously denting demand and hurting Dated Brent.

Tariffs! Again. The umpteenth round had the market opening higher today, rising 40c from Friday’s close. Trump’s gone cold on Putin because he keeps dropping bombs – and he’s telling Europe to “toughen up” and go cold turkey on Russian energy too. His proposed collective NATO tariffs on China of 50-100% would be a massive escalation of the gumming up process of global trade. Instead of pouring treacle into the system, they’d be dumping concrete… But America keeps on buying what it needs like titanium and nuclear plants fuel. He should lead by example. Instead, the Europeans need to suck it up, poor weaklings.

$67 was easy pickings, so Brent decided to wallop $68 too! Little wonder, as all the bullish factors are coming to a head at the end of this week. The US is reportedly pushing for G7 countries to impose 100% tariffs on China and India as a punishment for their continued purchases of Russian oil. Even though workarounds will be found, the short-term implications are bullish. Plus, the story of China buying an extra…

11 September 2025: 09:30 BST

Wow! Brent really took off after the Asian close and is now flirting with the $67 level again! But the rally came against a jittery backdrop, with the market still scared of the possibility of more Saudi barrels, regardless of the evident reality that those extra barrels are going to committed buyers. And flat price felt the pain as a result, dropping rapidly yesterday afternoon from comfortably above $67 to barely higher than $66 – and today it kept dropping, falling below $66 before the window! It recovered slightly to close at $66.27/bbl. Yet, the prompt spread managed to hold firm at 36c. As we said in Euro 2.176, backwardation is holding and that means people are buying… the price reveals the truth.

The number looks big – at 51 mil bbl the Saudi allocation to China for October is the same as the August allocation and 8 mil bbl up from September – so some were quick to jump to bearish conclusions! But the excess supply expected to be exported as the summer burn fades into the market’s memory. Any has been sucked up by China and there is loads of demand out there in Asia, so there shouldn’t be any overhang. The Saudis need to sell and the Chinese are happy to buy!

Wow! We are hearing from trading sources 51 million barrels of Saudi allocations to China for October loading folks! If the physical premium is down and the Saudi OSPs are down, allocations rise, who would have thought? Brent slid back from its highs of yesterday afternoon through the Asian session, grinding downwards towards the low-$67 range. Although flat price has recovered from its dip towards $65, against Dubai, it’s still getting hammered! The October Brent/Dubai spread has tumbled to near -$1.70 – it was only -58c on 4 September. The sweet vs sour game is still where the party’s at, even as the parties in Singapore wind down.

The orange man hits yet again! Trump’s “Here we go!” response to the Russia-Poland drone situation overwhelmed the bearish sense the EIA inventory build report gave the market. Flat price jumped almost 50c/bbl within a minute to $67.50/bbl, even the prompt spread gained on the news to climb to 35c by London close. But the night is young, folks! Geopolitical nerves are jangling again and APPEC attendees look worried. The Israeli attack on Doha has ostracised the US even further, as many at APPEC say, “We can’t trust America.”

‘God protect me from my friends, because my enemies I can handle,’ said an oil company as a comment on the Israeli attack on Doha, and supporting role the US is widely believed to have had. Questions were also emerging over what territory the Israeli planes flew over. “Was it Saudi territory?” Asked a senior shipping executive. International law and diplomacy are dead in a ditch! No energy infrastructure was hit, but who knows what’s next on the hit list? By the way, the Ruwais Refinery 2 (417 kb/d) should be back to full operation today after yesterday’s precautionary shutdown.

Dated dive bombed, this is the lowest physical differential since The Officials began Dated Brent assessments!! Brent finally cleared, with Gunvor lifting Mercuria’s discounted CIF 30 Sep-4 Oct cargo at $1.30 over Dated. Mercuria was happy with that and then withdrew its FOB 22-24 Sep Brent offer at Dated -$0.80. Meanwhile, Trafi and Exxon offered Forties for 23-25 Sep and 26-28 Sep at Dated +$0.20 and Dated -$0.20, respectively. Ekofisk was offered too, with Shell going as low as Dated +$2.30 for a CIF 1-5 Oct cargo, while Mercuria offered FOB Sep 29-1 Oct at $1.25 over Dated. The physical differential hit rock bottom at -49.5c.