The Jan’25 Brent futures contract strengthened this afternoon from $72.95/bbl at 12:00 GMT up to $73.35/bbl at 17:45 GMT (time of writing). Crude prices were volatile this afternoon, rising to $73.85/bbl at 15:25 GMT and steeply selling off to $72.85/bbl by 15:30 GMT, amid news that Iran agreed to stop producing near bomb-grade uranium, according to Bloomberg. Prices recovered amid ongoing concerns regarding North Sea production outages and escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In the news today, Russian crude oil shipments dipped to a two-month low in the four weeks to 17 November, as loading from Russia’s Western ports decreased, as per tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. In other news, Nigeria’s Dangote refinery is looking to buy WTI Midland for December arrival with a cargo size of 1-2mb, to be delivered to the Lekki plant near Lagos. In addition, data by Vortexa and Kpler revealed that a tanker has hauled more than 300kb of gasoline from the Dangote plant to waters of Togo, a potential sign that more volume could enter regional markets. At the time of writing, the Jan/Feb’25 and Jan/Jul’25 Brent futures spreads stand at $0.25/bbl and $1.00/bbl, respectively.
