Category: News & Announcement

China became the first major economy to grow since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, recording an unexpectedly strong 3.2 per cent expansion in the latest quarter after anti-virus lockdowns were lifted and factories and stores reopened. Growth reported on Thursday for the three months ending in June was a dramatic improvement over the previous quarter’s 6.8pc contraction — China’s worst performance since at least the mid-1960s. But it still was the weakest positive figure since China started reporting quarterly growth in the early 1990s. “We expect to see continuous…

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Venezuela’s state oil firm PDVSA has resumed gasoline production at the only operating refinery in the country home to the world’s largest oil reserves that is experiencing severe gasoline shortages, sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. PDVSA’s refinery Cardon, capable of processing 310,000 barrels per day, was hit by a fire last week and people with knowledge of the operations told Reuters on July 6 that gasoline production was halted because the fire had affected the catalytic cracking unit. The refinery has since resumed production of gasoline, according…

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The spot price of the U.S. natural gas benchmark Henry Hub hit record lows in the first half of 2020 due to mild winter early in the year and depressed demand later on with the pandemic, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Monday. The average monthly Henry Hub spot price in the first six months of 2020 was $1.81 per million British thermal units (MMBtu). Monthly prices reached as low as $1.63 per MMBtu in June, the lowest monthly inflation-adjusted price since at least 1989, according to EIA estimates.…

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Crude oil production has already peaked in the United States, according to a leading independent oil producer in the U.S. shale patch. Chief executive of Parsley Energy Matt Gallagher said that the peak production that the United States hit back in March—13.1 million bpd on average—represented shale’s glory days, ne’er to be repeated, according to the Financial Times. That forecast comes as the Energy Information Administration published its monthly Drilling Productivity Report, which shows the month of August should see even less production from the seven largest shale plays in…

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Global oil demand is set to crash by 7.9 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday, but this forecast is slightly more optimistic than last month’s expectation of an 8.1-million-bpd demand drop. The IEA, however, noted that the recent rise in COVID-19 cases and the reinstating of partial lockdowns in some countries continue to weigh with uncertainty on the world’s global oil demand in 2020. This year, the world is expected to consume an average of 92.1 million bpd of oil, compared…

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