Oil registered its biggest weekly decline since July as a streak of disappointing economic data compounded fears about a global recession.
The 0.7 percent rise in New York-traded futures on Friday was not enough to correct a 5.5 percent drop for the week. Rising US payrolls and the lowest unemployment rate in five decades undercut prospects of interest-rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve.
“The relative strength of the jobs report throws cold water on concept that the Fed will cut rates,” Mizuho Securities USA futures division director Bob Yawger said.
Oil has been under pressure all week from a series of gloomy US economic data. A key measure of US service-industry activity dropped to the lowest in three years, while an employment gauge registered its weakest reading in more than five years.
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for November delivery rose US$0.36 to settle at US$52.81 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, down 3.8 percent for the week.
Brent for December delivery increased US$0.66 to settle at US$58.37 on the ICE Futures Europe Exchange, down 4.4 percent for the week.
It traded at a US$5.63 premium to WTI for the same month.
Signs of economic deterioration in the US, China and Germany are worsening an already fragile consumption outlook for fuels.
OPEC member Nigeria on Thursday said that oil demand would be “very challenging” next year.
Those concerns, combined with quick repairs at damaged Saudi Arabian oil installations, have evaporated oil’s gains following the Sept. 14 bombardment of the kingdom.
“Oil markets are focusing on severe macro risks, but are also shrugging off the most heightened geopolitical risk in years,” Citigroup Inc analyst Ed Morse wrote in a report. “As markets shed just about any consideration of supply risk, attention stays focused on what is nearly universally expected to be a significantly weaker year of demand growth.”
Washington and Beijing are set to restart high-level trade negotiations next week, but the chances of a short-term breakthrough do not appear to be high.
Meanwhile, the US this week imposed tariffs on European goods including aircraft and dairy products.
Drilling rigs targeting crude in US fields fell by three to 710 last week, the lowest since May 2017, Baker Hughes Inc reported Friday.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained