May’25 Brent futures has been supported this afternoon, rising from $70.55/bbl at 1200 GMT up to $71.20/bbl just before 1700 GMT, tapering to $71.00/bl at 1735 GMT (time of writing). EIA stats released this afternoon recorded a 1.75mb build in US crude oil inventories in the week to 14 Mar, higher than the expected build of 1.1mb. In the news today, the Kremlin stated that Russia has suspended its attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, following yesterday’s phone call between Putin and Trump where Russia declined to endorse a full 30-day ceasefire. President Zelenskiy claims Putin’s words were insufficient and that Ukraine would provide a list of energy facilities it hopes the US and allies would help monitor, as per Reuters. In other news, Serbian oil company NIS, majority-owned by Gazprom Neft and Gazprom, has submitted a second request to the US for a waiver of sanctions. The sanctions could result in crude supply cuts for NIS, which operates a single oil refinery in Serbia with an annual capacity of 4.8 million tons. Finally, Vitol is set to buy stakes in upstream assets in West Africa from Eni for $1.65 billion, the Italian major said today. This would include a 30% stake in Eni’s Baleine project in Cote d’Ivoire, where current production exceeds 60kb/d of oil equivalent. At the time of writing, the May/Jun’25 and May/Nov’25 Brent futures spreads stand at $0.45/bbl and $2.33/bbl.
