By Barani Krishnan
Investing.com - The bad news can’t seem to stop coming for oil. President Donald Trump’s ban on most Europeans from coming into the United States to prevent the Covid-19 spread led to a loss of as much as 7% for crude prices Thursday.
In a week where oil had already suffered its biggest one-day crash in nearly 30 years from the ramp-up in Saudi production, Trump’s decision to bar travellers from 26 European nations dealt a fresh blow to the investor psyche across markets.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 tumbled more than 8%, with even an emergency cash injection of some $1.5 trillion promised by the New York Federal Reserve providing little respite.
For oil, particularly, the European travel ban meant even fewer transatlantic flights, delivering fresh pain to airlines already teetering on the brink of collapse from the loss in business from the Far East to central Europe.
West Texas Intermediate, the New York-traded benchmark for U.S. crude prices, settled down $1.48, or 4.5%, at $31.50 per barrel, extending the 4% drop from the previous session. Since Friday’s settlement, WTI has lost $9.78, or 24%, putting it on track to its worst week since December 2008 and the third-largest weekly decline on record.
Brent, the London-traded global benchmark for crude, lost $2.57, or 7.2%, to settle at $33.22. It was down $12.05, or almost 27%, on the week.
“There was an oil surplus before the coronavirus and there is now even more of that surplus, not only because the demand gets lower every day but also because the supply is getting larger too,” said Igor Windisch of the IBW Oil Brief. “So this crash is not panic, it is pure logic – and this is the only reassuring fact, really.”
Oil’s bottom fell out on Friday after market titans Saudi Arabia and Russia resolved not to cut to production anymore and instead sell as much of their crude as possible at lower prices to grab share from a rapidly declining market amid the coronavirus crisis.
Consultancy Rystad Energy said on Thursday that it expected jet fuel to be hardest hit, after the U.S. ban on most inbound European flights.
“We expect global air traffic will fall by approximately 16% this year versus the levels seen in 2019, which we estimate stood at around 190,000 flights per day (including commercial, cargo and private flights as well as helicopters),” analysts at the consultancy wrote.
To put the reduction into context, Rystad Energy’s pre-coronavirus estimate was for an average of 200,000 flights per day this year, the analysts said.
“Oil prices are about to get uglier,” said Ed Moya of online trading platform OANDA. “As the Saudis and Russians ramp up production, a key super-contango threshold has been reached, suggesting another plunge is upon us.”
Contango refers to a situation in commodities where the front-month contract in a particular market trades at a discount to farther months for delivery.
In Brent’s case, crude for immediate delivery fell on Thursday to a discount of about $10 a barrel compared with the same crude for delivery in one year’s time. Such a market dynamic allows traders to buy crude immediately, put it in storage somewhere, and try and make a gain by selling it forward. While that may be lucrative for the individual, the oil sitting in storage shows up as part of global inventories, further depressing the spot price.