U.S. crude oil futures rebounded more than 1% on Monday after posting the worst week since October 2023.
The U.S. benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, and the Brent global benchmark have fallen more than 15% in the third quarter.
“We have lost 400 million barrels of financial demand since early July,” Daan Struyven, oil research head at Goldman Sachs, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday. “That is basically 7 million barrels per day of financial demand that we lost.”
Here are Monday’s closing energy prices:
- West Texas Intermediate October contract: $68.71 per barrel, up $1.04, or 1.54%. Year to date, U.S. crude oil has fallen 4%.
- Brent November contract: $71.84 per barrel, up 78 cents, or 1.1%. Year to date, the global benchmark has pulled back 6.8%.
- RBOB Gasoline October contract: $1.92 per gallon, up more than 2 cents, or 1.3%. Year to date, gasoline has declined 8.7%.
- Natural Gas October contract: $2.17 per thousand cubic feet, down more than 10 cents, or 4.6%. Year to date, gas has lost 13.7%.
Weak demand in China has weighed on the crude market, with consumption expected to soften in Europe and the U.S. as the summer driving season winds down and refineries go into maintenance mode.
OPEC+ has delayed a production boost originally scheduled to begin in October as prices have deteriorated. Goldman expects the group to start increasing production in December and forecasts that Brent will trade in a range of $70 to $85 per barrel.
“We don’t look for a recession as our base case,” Struyven said. “The recession probability for the U.S. economy from Goldman research is still 20% over the next 12 months.”
