Oil falls, heading for biggest monthly slide since 2008

Oil tankers wait to dock at Tupras refinery near the northwestern Turkish city of Izmit, Turkey. - REUTERS 

LONDON (Reuters): Oil fell on Thursday, bringing losses for the month so far to 23%, marking its largest one-month fall since the depths of the financial crisis in 2008.

A seemingly relentless rise in US crude supply, together with Saudi Arabia’s insistence that it will not cut output on its own to stabilise the market, wiped out overnight gains in oil futures.

Brent crude futures LCOc1 fell 64 cents on the day to $ 58.12 a barrel, off an earlier session high of $ 59.51, while US crude futures CLc1 dropped below $ 50 for the first time in over a year. The January contract was last down 40 cents at $ 49.89.

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC producers meet in Vienna next week to discuss a new round of supply cuts of 1 million to 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) and possibly more to prop up prices.

US crude inventories have hit their highest in a year after a 10th consecutive weekly increase, and are now only 80 million barrels below March 2017’s record 535 million barrels, according to the Energy Information Administration. [EIA/S]

“WTI oil is now trading right around the $ 50 per barrel level, a price last seen well over a year ago, as the current oversupply situation has now manifested itself in 10 consecutive weekly increases in US oil inventories,” said Australia’s Rivkin Securities Investment Analyst William O’Loughlin.

Investors in commodity markets are looking ahead to the meeting of leaders of the Group of 20 nations (G20), the world’s biggest economies, on 30 November and 1 December, with the US-China trade war a key focus.