In this week's Market Movers Europe with Nikolaos Aidinis-Antonopoulos:
- Oil markets seek physical clues amid financial woes
- Fifth UK Contracts for Difference round opens
- Strikes continue to impact French gas, LNG sector
- Mediterranean clean Handysize freight jump
In oil, market sentiment remains subdued. Traders are concerned about spillover risks from the banking sector and will be looking for clues as to how the financial turmoil may affect supply-demand fundamentals.
In physical trade, analysts suggest the crisis has yet to hit demand growth, and attention is shifting to whether OPEC+ will have steeper production cuts.
On Thursday, the UK’s fifth allocation round opens for renewable energy project support contracts.
The competition will again seek to attract large amounts of offshore wind, with only modest support for emerging technologies like tidal.
After years of declining costs, the key question is whether energy prices will have to rise this year to reflect inflation, raw material costs and bottlenecks in the supply chain.
Uncertainty is still clouding the outlook for the French gas and LNG sector as strikes continue to impact operations.
Strikes at three of France's four LNG import facilities have been extended twice and are expected to continue until at least Tuesday.
Freight markets will also have their eyes on the strikes coming to an end, which is likely to relieve the clean tanker markets of any further upward pressure.
Rates for the 30,000 mt cross-Med jumped by almost 37% in just three days.
A lack of available tonnage in the region and the French strikes have forced Handysize tankers to occupy other available ports in the Med route with congestion further pressuring supply of tonnage.
I’m Nikolaos Aidinis-Antonopoulos, thank you for kicking off your Monday with S&P Global Commodity Insights.