Chinese imports of Russian crude are down 7%
August 20, 2024
Midday yesterday the market turned negative after pushing higher off early in the day lows following news that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said Netanyahu supported a US effort to bridge the Gaza ceasefire proposal. Ceasefire news is the headline so far today and that news is right in front of traders and that has the markets just slightly lower here to start today. If these talks progress it will take some of the Middle East risk premium out of the market but as we all know these are very fluid situations and can change quickly.
The poor economic outlook for China also continues to put some downside pressure on energy prices. China’s crude imports from Russia, its largest supplier, was down 7.4% in July from a year ago.
This is not directly related to energy, but I found these comments in Bloomberg interesting. For the first time ever, a bar of gold is worth a million dollars. The milestone was reached Friday when the precious metal’s spot price surpassed $2,500 per troy ounce, an all-time high. With gold bars typically weighing about 400 ounces, that would make each one worth more than $1 million.
S&P Global Commodity Insights ArbFlow tool is showing a $2.32 per barrel incentive to move distillate from the US Gulf to Northwest Europe and a $1.34 per barrel incentive to move product from the US Gulf to the Mediterranean market.