- Oil extends losses ahead of U.S Federal Reserve minutes
- April ’23 WTI lost 37c this morning to trade around $76/Bbl
- Crude prices continued to decline for a fifth-consecutive day amid Russia’s resilience against western sanctions and concerns of economic slowdown
- The release of the Fed’s minutes today may indicate further clues on the path forward to monetary tightening in the U.S.
- Despite a recovery in Chinese demand, prices have been held back by concerns of a slowdown in the US economy as the Fed tightens monetary policy in response to high inflation
- Also weighing on prices this week was a strong US dollar that is at a nine-week high
- The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), an important route for Kazakhstan's oil exports, has stopped taking crude from the Tengiz field today due to storms in the Black Sea (BBG)
- CPC is still accepting some crude from other Kazakh and Russian fields at reduced rates as inventories are almost full
- The consortium said that the output in the Tengiz field is unaffected for now, but in the past, outages have caused Kazakhstan to cut production temporarily
- The pipeline transports 67 million tonnes of oil a year (around 1.2 MMBBL/d)
- Kazakhstan expects CPC to start loading on Thursday as the weather is forecast to improve