Oil prices rose after OPEC+ signaled that it would pause output increases next quarter, following a modest hike for next month.
Brent for January rose above US$65 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate was near US$61.
OPEC and allies on Sunday said they would raise output by 137,000 barrels a day next month, matching expectations. The group then takes a three month hiatus from January to March.
Photo: Reuters
Global benchmark Brent has slumped about 10 percent over the past three months, as the market faces the prospect of ballooning oversupply. Still, prices recently bounced from a five-month low after tighter US sanctions on Russian producers raised some questions about supply prospects from that nation.
The OPEC+ output decision and planned pause are “an acknowledgment from the group that the market is facing a sizeable surplus next year,” ING Groep NV head of commodities strategy Warren Patterson said in Singapore.
There is plenty of uncertainty concerning the scale of oversupply, and it is unclear how disruptive the latest sanctions on Russia are going to be, he added.
The eight key members of OPEC+ are left with about 1.2 million barrels a day of their current supply tranche still to restore. Actual output increases have fallen short of advertised volumes, as some members offset earlier overproduction and others struggle to pump more.
Following the OPEC+ move, Morgan Stanley raised its near-term price forecast for Brent, while maintaining a warning for a “substantial surplus.” The United Arab Emirates yesterday added to the chorus of producers who have come out to downplay glut concerns.
Traders are monitoring disruptions to flows, after a Ukrainian drone attack in the Black Sea left a tanker ablaze and damaged loading facilities in the port city of Tuapse, Russia. The area is home to a refinery run by PJSC Rosneft Oil Co, which was sanctioned last month by the US, along with PJSC Lukoil Oil Co.
US President Donald Trump threatened possible US military action against militants in Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, if the country’s government does not halt the groups’ “killing of Christians.” He hinted at an immediate cutoff in aid to the OPEC member.
GROWING OWINGS: While Luxembourg and China swapped the top three spots, the US continued to be the largest exposure for Taiwan for the 41st consecutive quarter The US remained the largest debtor nation to Taiwan’s banking sector for the 41st consecutive quarter at the end of September, after local banks’ exposure to the US market rose more than 2 percent from three months earlier, the central bank said. Exposure to the US increased to US$198.896 billion, up US$4.026 billion, or 2.07 percent, from US$194.87 billion in the previous quarter, data released by the central bank showed on Friday. Of the increase, about US$1.4 billion came from banks’ investments in securitized products and interbank loans in the US, while another US$2.6 billion stemmed from trust assets, including mutual funds,
Micron Memory Taiwan Co (台灣美光), a subsidiary of US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, has been granted a NT$4.7 billion (US$149.5 million) subsidy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs A+ Corporate Innovation and R&D Enhancement program, the ministry said yesterday. The US memorychip maker’s program aims to back the development of high-performance and high-bandwidth memory chips with a total budget of NT$11.75 billion, the ministry said. Aside from the government funding, Micron is to inject the remaining investment of NT$7.06 billion as the company applied to participate the government’s Global Innovation Partnership Program to deepen technology cooperation, a ministry official told the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s leading advanced chipmaker, officially began volume production of its 2-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a recent update on the company’s Web site. The low-key announcement confirms that TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware providers Nvidia Corp and iPhone maker Apple Inc, met its original roadmap for the next-generation technology. Production is currently centered at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, utilizing the company’s first-generation nanosheet transistor technology. The new architecture achieves “full-node strides in performance and power consumption,” TSMC said. The company described the 2nm process as
Even as the US is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market. Despite considerable geopolitical tensions, Chinese open-source AI models are winning over a growing number of programmers and companies in the US. These are different from the closed generative AI models that have become household names — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI or Google’s Gemini — whose inner workings are fiercely protected. In contrast, “open” models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba (阿里巴巴) to DeepSeek (深度求索), allow programmers to customize parts of the software to suit their
RSS