Oil prices dip to settle at 3-week low on US and China economic concerns
eased on Friday and settled at a three-week low as traders worried about negative economic news from the US and China and signs of growing supply.
Losses were limited by optimism US trade deals could boost global economic growth and oil demand in the future.
Brent crude futures
fell 74 cents, or 1.1 per cent, to settle at $68.44, while US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude fell 87 cents, or 1.3 per cent, to settle at $65.16.
Those were the lowest settlement levels for Brent since July 4 and WTI since June 30.
For the week, Brent was down about 1 per cent with WTI down about 3 per cent.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will meet US President Donald Trump on Sunday in Scotland. European Union officials and diplomats said they expected to reach a framework trade deal this weekend.
The euro zone economy has remained resilient to the pervasive uncertainty caused by a global trade war, a slew of data showed on Friday, even as European Central Bank policymakers appeared to temper market bets on no more rate cuts.
In the US, new orders for US-manufactured capital goods unexpectedly fell in June while shipments of those products increased moderately, suggesting business spending on equipment slowed considerably in the second quarter.
Trump said he had a good meeting with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and got the impression that the head of the US central bank might be ready to lower interest rates.
Lower interest rates reduce consumer borrowing costs and can boost economic growth and demand for oil.
In China, the world's second-biggest economy, fiscal revenue dipped 0.3 per cent in the first six months from a year earlier, the finance ministry said, maintaining the rate of decline seen between January and May.
Growing supplies?
The US is preparing to allow partners of Venezuela's state-run PDVSA, starting with US oil major Chevron , to operate with limitations in the sanctioned nation, sources said on Thursday.
That could boost
Venezuelan oil exports
by a little more than 200,000 barrels per day (bpd), news US refiners would welcome, as it would ease tightness in the heavier crude market, ING analysts wrote.
Iran said it would continue nuclear talks with European powers after "serious, frank, and detailed" conversations on Friday, the first such face-to-face meeting since Israel and the US bombed Iran last month.
Venezuela and Iran are members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Any deal that could increase the amount of oil either sanctioned country could export would boost the amount of crude available to global markets.
OPEC said the joint ministerial monitoring committee (JMMC) scheduled to convene on Monday does not hold decision-making authority over production levels.
Four OPEC+ delegates said an OPEC+ panel is unlikely to alter existing plans to raise oil output when it meets, noting the producer group is keen to recover market share while summer demand is helping to absorb the extra barrels. OPEC+ includes OPEC and allies like Russia.
In Russia, the world's No. 2 crude producer behind the US, daily oil exports from its western ports are set to be around 1.77 million bpd in August, down from 1.93 million bpd in July's plan, Reuters calculations based on data from two sources show.
In the US, energy firms this week cut the number of oil and natural gas rigs operating for the 12th time in 13 weeks, energy services firm
Baker Hughes
said in its closely followed report on Friday.
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Economic Times
27 minutes ago
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US stocks tick higher on rate cut hopes; earnings in spotlight
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First Post
38 minutes ago
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Jobs data firestorm: Trump blasts ‘rigged' numbers after poor hiring revisions
President Trump fired the BLS commissioner after accusing the agency of rigging job numbers. The firing follows sharp downward revisions to job data for May and June, raising concerns about political interference and economic data reliability read more The monthly jobs report is already highly watched on Wall Street and in Washington, but it has taken on additional importance since President Donald Trump sacked the officer in charge of it on Friday. Trump said that June's job data were 'RIGGED' to make him and other Republicans 'look bad,' but he offered no evidence. Erika McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner nominated by former President Joe Biden, was fired following Friday's employment report, which revealed that hiring was poor in July and had practically came to a halt in May and June, just after Trump imposed massive tariffs. 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The Hindu
38 minutes ago
- The Hindu
India's presence amid a broken template of geopolitics
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However, the U.S. designated The Resistance Front (TRF), which claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). And in a welcome recognition, the report by the UN Security Council's Monitoring Team also named the TRF for the Pahalgam attack. A path with Trump-created hurdles But all is not well. On a historic day when the NISAR satellite (India-U.S. collaboration) was launched, Mr. Trump hit India with a 25% tariff. However, he made a purely trade issue, which could have been resolved in negotiations, into a geopolitical issue, threatening India by 'substantially' raising tariffs for its importing Russian oil when Ukrainians are being killed by the 'Russian War Machine.' India was being trumped especially when Mr. Trump himself is a strong votary of U.S.-Russian rapprochement. While one can dismiss this as typical Trump-style last minute pressure, he has already called on U.S. companies not to invest in India but only in the U.S., and hire only Americans. This comes on the heels of the U.S.'s lopsided security and trade deals with its Indo-Pacific allies and the European Union (EU). American tech giant Nvidia has been permitted by the U.S. to resume sales of its H20 AI chips to China, stopped earlier due to national security concerns. More time has been given to China to get the deal done. After getting bogged down in Ukraine and West Asia, the U.S. has less focus on East Asia. Consequently, if a broader geopolitical understanding between the U.S. and China on East Asia was to come about, it would constrict the space for India. East Asian countries are already hedging their bets. The U.S.'s posturing on South Asia has not helped either. Growing U.S.-Pakistan relations have again become an irritant. Even if this is a reset in bilateral relations, the U.S. has displayed astonishing insensitivity to India's security concerns by praising Pakistan for counter-terrorism efforts, and regional stability. In Bangladesh, the U.S. had gone against Indian interests in supporting the ouster of Sheikh Hasina. In Myanmar, U.S. and European support for forces opposing the military government is destabilising India's north-east. After Galwan and Pahalgam, India's hope for better understanding and coordination with the U.S. on regional security interests has been belied. Mutual trust is being rapidly eroded. Acting in concert with the U.S., the EU is targeting India's import-led energy security at a time when India is negotiating an India-EU Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement. The EU has sanctioned India's Vadinar Refinery, where Russian Rosneft has a large stake, knowing full well that stopping Russian oil into India will lead to huge pressure on oil prices. On the other hand, Hungary, Slovakia, Belgium, Spain and others are importing Russian oil, through pipelines and as LNG, by securing exemptions or under existing contracts. Europe receives 51% of Russian LNG exports. The EU's carbon border tax and digital and other trade barriers on India remain. India hopes that the recently concluded India-U.K. Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) will force the EU to climb down from its asks in its trade negotiations. China's moves All this has given China an opportunity to, once again, become active in India's neighbourhood. China has proposed new groupings and new deals to keep India out. For example, China's meeting with Pakistan and Bangladesh in Kunming on June 19, 2025 proposed formalising a trilateral initiative, but Bangladesh has not agreed. China is also helping Bangladesh revive a Second World War airbase at Lalmonirhat which is close to the Siliguri Corridor. China's support to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor was extensive. China has also standardised Mandarin names for locations within Arunachal Pradesh. And it wants to seize the future of the institution of the Dalai Lama from India. Riding on a huge trade surplus with India, China is squeezing India's crucial supply chains such as rare earths, fertilizers, Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, tunnel boring machines and technical personnel. More worrying is the planned construction of China's largest dam in Tibet on the Yarlung Zangbo (Tibetan name for the Brahmaputra), which is near the Indian border. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to the Maldives has been timely given China's influence. To counterbalance an unpredictable, and even unreliable, U.S., an unresponsive EU and an aggressive China, India is carrying out a tightrope act. It has prioritised accelerating the current thaw in relations with China to reset equations after the Galwan conflict — despite there being no move towards de-escalation on the border after the initial disengagement in October 2024. Further, India should seriously rethink its stand to remain on the margins of global conflicts. India has been largely silent, if not openly pro-Israel, on the ongoing Israel-Gaza war — an unfolding multidimensional human tragedy. India was also largely silent on the recent Israel-Iran conflict and American bombings, despite important relations with both warring parties and huge stakes in the Gulf. Though it rightly abstained on the UN votes on the Ukraine conflict, its overall approach of not taking a proactive stand on world conflicts may hurt its larger interests and diminish its geopolitical clout as long as it remains on the sidelines. Operation Sindoor has shown India that if it seeks a greater engagement of its partners with its conflicts and issues, India needs to engage more with their conflicts and issues. Some argue that India should keep its head down and focus on becoming the third largest economy and that a larger geopolitical role may hurt its economic growth. The contrary is true. In a fragmenting world order, geopolitics, coercion and threats and protectionism are determining economic and technological outcomes — not most favoured nation or free trade or multilateral World Trade Organization-led trade norms. Therefore, to get its economic and technological trajectory right, India needs to get its geopolitics right. The road ahead Realising that the geopolitical space is shrinking, India is finally breaking free and has objected to the 'targeting'. It has called out the double-speak of the U.S. and the EU under the guise of safeguarding their economic interests — the EU for larger trade in goods and services with Russia than India in 2024, and the U.S. for importing Russian uranium, palladium, fertilizers and chemicals. India's call for a ceasefire in Gaza (it abstained on a similar UN General Assembly resolution two months ago), is a realisation that it needs to be assertive in global conflicts to preserve its strategic autonomy. Facing an erosion of trust with the U.S. and a U.S.-China deal, India needs to clinch an India-U.S. trade deal soon to prevent a further deterioration of relations and to persuade Mr. Trump to travel to India for the Quad summit (India-U.S.-Japan-Australia). After Mr. Trump's outburst, it is a moot point whether India will revive the RIC (Russia-India-China). However, greater engagement with BRICS (2026 summit in India), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and with East Asia (having missed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership bus), will only reinforce India's policy of multi-alignment and push back those who constrain it. No more can India just put our head down, mind its own economic business and expect to grow. That template is now broken. T.S. Tirumurti is former Ambassador/Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, New York and former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi
