U.S. crude oil futures rebounded nearly 1% on Monday after posting the worst week since October 2023.
The U.S. benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, has fallen 15.8% so far in the third quarter while the Brent global benchmark has fallen more than 16.6%.
“We have lost 400 million barrels of financial demand since early July,” Daan Struyven, oil research head at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday. “That is basically 7 million barrels per day of financial demand that we lost.”
Here are Monday’s energy prices:
- West Texas Intermediate October contract: $68.13 per barrel, up 46 cents, or 0.68%. Year to date, U.S. crude oil has fallen 4.8%.
- Brent November contract: $71.56 per barrel, up 50 cents, or 0.7%. Year to date, the global benchmark has pulled back 7%.
- RBOB Gasoline October contract: $1.92 per gallon, up more than 2 cents, or 1.5%. Year to date, gasoline has declined 8.4%.
- Natural Gas October contract: $2.18 per thousand cubic feet, down more than 8 cents, or 3.8%. Year to date, gas has lost 13%.
Weak demand in China has weighed on the crude market, with consumption expected to soften in Europe and the U.S. as the summer driving season winds down and refineries go into maintenance mode.
OPEC+ has delayed a production boost originally scheduled to begin in October as prices have deteriorated. Goldman expects the group to start increasing production in December and forecasts that Brent will trade in a range of $70 to $85 per barrel.
“We don’t look for a recession as our base case,” Struyven said. “The recession probability for the U.S. economy from Goldman research is still 20% over the next 12 months.”
