Oil Dips on Stronger Dollar, Fear of Supply Increase

By Adedapo Adesanya

Oil prices fell on Friday as gains in the U.S. Dollar and expectations that more supply will likely to come back to the market depressed the market environment.

Consequently, the Brent crude dropped 1.1 per cent or 75 cents sell at $66.13 per barrel, while the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude dipped  $2.01 or 3.2 per cent to sell at $61.52 per barrel.

A stronger greenback makes US-Dollar priced oil more expensive for those buying crude in other currencies and this saw prices drop.

Despite the decline in prices on Friday, both Brent and WTI are on track for gains of about 20 per cent this month, as markets have grappled with supply disruptions in the United States, while optimism has built for demand to improve with vaccine rollouts.

Investors are betting that next week’s meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies, together called OPEC+, will result in more supply coming back to the market.

Oil prices have more than recovered to levels before the COVID-19 pandemic with global inventories trending down amid accelerating vaccine rollouts.

US crude prices on Friday faced a larger headwind due to the loss of refinery demand after several Gulf Coast facilities were shuttered during the winter storm last week.

Estimates show that this is about 4 million barrels per day of capacity still shut and it may take until March 5 for all of the shut capacity to resume though there is the risk of delays.

In other oil-related news, the OPEC+ group of producers complied at 103 per cent with the oil output cuts in January, higher than the estimated compliance in December, according to the sources with the cartel.

According to reports, in January 2021, the 10 OPEC members bound by the pact achieved 108 per cent compliance, while the non-OPEC group of producers, led by Russia, complied with the cuts by 95 per cent, up from 93 per cent in December.

The compliance figures will be reviewed by the OPEC+ panels next week, before the monthly meeting of the group’s ministers, expected to decide how the group will proceed with the supply management from April onwards

The leaders of the OPEC+ alliance, Saudi Arabia and Russia, are reportedly once again at odds over oil production policies, especially in light of the oil price rally so far this year.