Summer trading remains seasonally thin, and attention has been drawn away from fundamentals towards broader macroeconomic news.
That’s what analysts at Standard Chartered Bank said under an “energy” segment in a report sent to Rigzone late Tuesday by the Standard Chartered team, adding that “focus over the past week was on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s 22 August speech at Jackson Hole”, which the analysts said in the report “was broadly neutral for oil market sentiment”.
In the report, Standard Chartered Bank analysts highlighted that Brent blend for October delivery settled at $68.80 per barrel on August 25, which they pointed out was a week on week rise of $2.20 per barrel, “and the highest settlement price for 24 days”.
“Prices have broken out of the tight range they had been stuck in for most of August, with a weekly intra-day trading range of $3.46 per barrel, but the upwards movement was capped by resistance at the 50-day moving average,” the analysts noted in the report.
“Our machine learning model SCORPIO’s upwards forecast was directionally correct, with prices passing through its $67.56 per barrel forecast on the two trading days prior to Monday settlement,” they added.
“This week it sees the upwards momentum as overdone, forecasting a softening back towards the $67 per barrel handle it has favored recently,” they continued.
The analysts went on to state in the report that “the relative pressure on WTI [West Texas Intermediate] continues, with the Brent-WTI spread for the prompt contracts remaining at c.$4.00 per barrel”.
“Money-manager positioning remains to the short side for energy products,” the analysts added in the report.
“The Standard Chartered Money Manager Positioning Index for WTI remains at -100, while Brent fell by 14.5 week on week to 0, and the combined crude oil metric for the four main Brent and WTI contracts fell 9.6 week on week to -59.4,” the analysts noted.
In the report, Standard Chartered projected that the ICE Brent nearby future crude oil price will average $61 per barrel this year, $78 per barrel in 2026, and $83 per barrel in 2027. In this report, Standard Chartered forecast that the commodity will come in at $65 per barrel in the fourth quarter of 2025, $71 per barrel in the first quarter of next year, $76 per barrel in the second quarter of 2026, $81 per barrel in the third quarter, and $83 per barrel in the fourth quarter.
In a Stratas Advisors report sent to Rigzone by the Stratas team late Monday, the company highlighted that the price of Brent crude “ended the week at $67.26 [per barrel] after closing the previous week at $66.13 [per barrel]”.
“The price of WTI ended the week at $63.77 [per barrel] after closing the previous week at $63.14 [per barrel]. The price of Oman crude oil ended the week at $69.96 [per barrel],” Stratas added.
“At the beginning of last week, we put forth the view that crude oil prices would stabilize, in part, because the oil market had already priced in the possibility of a resolution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the unfavorable supply/demand fundamentals,” Stratas noted in this report.
“Consequently, prices got a boost from signs that an end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict is not imminent, even after the recent flurry of meetings,” Stratas went on to state.
Rigzone contacted the White House, the Department of Information and Press of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Press Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, and the European Commission for comment on the Stratas Advisors report.
The European Commission declined to comment. The White House, the Department of Information and Press of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Press Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine have not responded to Rigzone at the time of writing.
To contact the author, email andreas.exarheas@rigzone.com
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