ENERGY

Oil prices managed gains today as MidEast risks trumped hawkish sentiment (and may even have been helped by a rise in rate-cut expectations as banking crisis fears reawakened).

The EIA report – saying oil inventories will fall and so will US production – also supported price action today.

Prices pared gains and even briefly declined after Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said at a news conference that Hamas’s response in negotiations over a (more…)

It's been a few days since we had a breaking headline out of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks, and so Qatari decided to break the silence with another market test:

• *HAMAS RESPONSE IN NEGOTIATIONS IS `POSITIVE:' AL THANI

…which instantly led to another algo-driven dump in oil, just like last week when Al Jazeera reported, briefly, that Hamas had a 'positive response' to the Israeli truce terms… before deleting the tweet.

"Hamas says (more…)

Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,

• China is over the halfway mark in completing its strategically vital oil project in the critical Iraqi energy hub of Nasiriyah.

• This facility will act as a storage hub and supply conduit for 3.0-3.5 million barrels of crude oil.

• Even before the huge strategic importance of the new Nasiriyah facility, China will benefit from its massively enhanced presence there in the matter of increasing its oil supplies from southern Iraq, with (more…)