The current state of the oil market resembles Samuel Beckett’s cult play Waiting for Godot. In the tragicomedy, the main character never arrives. In the oil market, the consensus, namely a supply surplus, is still expected to befall us in the coming months, albeit later than anticipated two months ago.
Mulling through the word soup that is dished up on a daily basis from the White House is a tiresome pursuit for investors, and stock markets, as strong as they may be, are starting to hunker down to await what will be a long month until such times as new tariffs are made clear come August 1st, if indeed the start of next month turns out to be a thing. The latest targets of the current ‘pick-and-mix’ bag of trade delights are copper and pharmaceuticals.
Predictable unpredictability is the motto of 2025, and yet, notwithstanding the unforeseen and the capricious, one thing seems certain, at least for now. That is, that OPEC production does not feature high on investors’ list of concerns. Or, you might say, the producer group has been reading the market sentiment admirably well. They started to increase output at the accelerated pace of 411,00 bpd the month after Brent fell below $60/bbl because of the US tariff charade on April 2.
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