It hasn’t been a great six months for oil. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, is down 6.6% since April to $62.33 per barrel). Brent, the international benchmark, is down own about 8.3% to $66.09 a barrel.
Right now 2026 is looking worse. The oil market is heading for an immense surplus in early 2026. How large? “Cartoonish,” Macquarie Group told Bloomberg.
OPEC+ has decided–in a surprise Saturday move–to increase production next month. The timing is actually shocking, coming as the global economy slows from the effects of the Trump tariffs, and coming just ahead of the seasonal winter slump in demand. Eight of the alliance’s key members decided during Saturday’s video-conference to restore 548,000 barrels a day of output in August. It’s a marked step-up from the 411,000-barrel hikes set for May, June and July, which were already triple the volume initially scheduled for those months.
Think the financial markets will shed some of their remarkable complacency tomorrow, Monday, June 23, now that the United States has hit Iran’s nuclear facilities with 30,000 pound bunker-buster bombs?
I’d be very surprised, especially if Iran retaliates by attacking U.S. bases in the Middle East and attempting to close the Strait of Hormuz to the global oil trade, if on Monday, we didn’t see a major upgrade in worry and risk avoidance in the stock, bond and commodity markets
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Short-Term Energy Outlook, released Tuesday, U.S. domestic crude production will decline in 2026 for the first time since 2021.
OPEC+ members are discussing making a third consecutive oil production surge in July, Bloomberg reported today. The cartel will make the decision at its June 1 meeting.
West Texas Intermediate crude fell another 1.30% on the futures market today to $60.77 a barrel. On January 15, the futures traded at $80.04 a barrel.
U.S. crude stockpiles rose by 3.45 million barrels, the biggest gain since March, the Energy Information Administration said Wednesday. And this comes before the latest round of production increases from OPEC Plus have kicked in. In April. OPEC and its allies added just 25,000 barrels a day of production, a fraction of the scheduled 138,000 barrels a day production increases. A further boost to production quotas is expected at OPEC’s June 1 meeting.
Russia’s oil-tax revenue in February slumped by almost a quarter year-on-year, suggesting producers have reined in output to meet the country’s OPEC+ quota.
Oil slid as U..S President Donald Trump promised to boost U.S. crude production. Brent crude retreated almost 1% to near $80 a barrel.
Global oil markets will face a widening glut in 2026 as OPEC brings back production and output from the United States, Canada and Guyana continues to grow, the U.S. Energy Information Agency said today, Tuesday, January 14. Today’s forecast was the agency’s first for 2026. World oil markets are expected to average a surplus of 800,000 barrels a day in 2026, the Energy Information Administration. That’s more than twice as large as the 300,000 barrel a day surplus the agency projects for 2025.
Canada is looking at imposing taxes on major commodities it exports to the United States-—including uranium, oil and potash—if the incoming Trump Administration carries out a threat to impose 25% tariffs on Canadian exports.
Oil edged lower–West Texas Intermediate closed down 0.06% and Brent ended 0.08% lower–after OPEC+ announced plans to defer supply increases for three months, but still add barrels starting in April to a market that’s expected to be oversupplied. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies agreed to delay their planned output hike.
The forecasts don’t totally agree on the date but they do agree on the trend: Because China’s sales of electric vehicles and hybrids accounted for more than half of retail passenger vehicle sales in the four months from July, the country’s demand for gasoline is near a peak. And unlike in the U.S. and Europe where peaks in consumption were followed by long plateaus, the drop in demand in the world’s top crude importer is expected to be more pronounced. Brokerage CITIC Futures sees Chinese gasoline consumption dropping by 4% to 5% a year through 2030. The
International Energy Agency says demand peaked in 2024 and forecasts a 2.3% decline in 2025.
COLDWMTNVDACMIPAASTBFIGOVFXY
UUPBABA
