This afternoon, the front-month Brent futures contract was initially rangebound between $68 and $68.40/bbl but softened further to $67.25/bbl at 16:40 BST. Prices found more support at this level and have since risen to $67.65/bbl at the time of writing (17:45 BST). Oil prices are on track towards their steepest w/w decline since March 2023. With the market shifting focus onto fundamental narratives, players will be monitoring the 6 July meeting of a group of OPEC+ producers, where the producers are expected to announce another 411kb/d output hike. In other news, China’s oil imports from Iran climbed to over 1.8mb/d between 1 and 20 June, as per data by Vortexa. In macro news, US consumer spending unexpectedly fell 0.1% in May 2025 after a 0.2% gain in April 2025, recording its second decline in 2025. Consumer spending may have fallen amid an end to the pre-emptive buying of goods ahead of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs in April. In China, profits at industrial firms dropped 9.1% y/y in May 2025, as per data by the National Bureau of Statistics. According to NBS statistician Yu Weining, the decline was caused by “insufficient effective demand, declining prices of industrial products and fluctuations in short-term factors.” Finally, at the time of writing, the Aug/Sep’25 and Aug/Feb’26 Brent futures spreads stand at $1.10/bbl and $3.10/bbl, respectively.
