Seesawing crude price, fresh lows & more

Oil prices have been seesawing all of this week in the wake of another round of Trump Tariffs, an OPEC+ production hike, market uncertainty, and so it goes. You name it, the market bears have it with crude prices currently lurking around 8-week lows. 

Brent closed at its lowest since June 10 on Wednesday, while the WTI closed at its lowest since June 5. 

However, even if you were to drown out the latest din, it is almost inescapable that both benchmarks have struggled to meaningfully maintain a price floor of $70 a barrel. 

Specifically on the global proxy benchmark Brent, as The Oilholic told Reuters, for all of what has been thrown the oil market's way geopolitically, it has struggled to stay above $70 a barrel for any convincing length of time. 

At the time of writing, Brent is down by over 10% on the year, 9% on a six-month basis, and, even more tellingly 11% year-to-date. That's because despite the various permutations and shifts the market has seen, it essentially remains well supplied at a time of uncertain demand.

Furthermore, the various macro factors - most notably China’s manufacturing contraction, weak US labour market data, and the chaos of Trump Tariffs - continue to temper expectations of any sort of lasting bullishness for crude.

Away from crude prices, here are yours truly's Forbes missives on a 10th successive quarterly profit decline at Saudi Aramco, Shell's share buybacks despite its own profits dip, and BP's latest bid to cheer up its underwhelmed shareholders. 

Additionally, here's The Oilholic's latest column for Energy Connects on the sector's incremental embrace of industrial AI and the commercial opportunities that presents the technology industry. 

Well that's all for now folks! More musings to follow soon. Keep reading, keep it here, keep it 'crude'! 

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To email: journalist_gsharma@yahoo.co.uk  

© Gaurav Sharma 2025. Photo: Oil pump jack building block model at the AVEVA World 2023 Conference, Moscone Center, San Francisco, US © Gaurav Sharma, October 2023.