World oil prices pull back
Crude futures pulled back on Friday, giving up gains from the previous session as trade concerns weighed on the market and fueled concerns about demand.
US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 settled down 47 cents at $68.49 a barrel. Brent crude futures LCOc1 settled at $73.21 per barrel, down 24 cents from their last close.
Both grades briefly traded down more than $1 a barrel. US crude ended the week down 0.4 percent, while Brent has fallen 1.5 percent in the week so far.
Fears that Chinese demand could taper fueled the pullback on Friday after state oil major Sinopec cut its purchases of US crude. China’s Unipec, the trading arm of Sinopec, has suspended crude oil imports from the United States due to the growing trade spat between Washington and Beijing, three sources familiar with the situation said on Friday.
Russian oil output rose by 150,000 barrels per day (bpd) in July from a month earlier to 11.21 million bpd, energy ministry data showed on Thursday.
Output by top exporter Saudi Arabia has also risen recently, to around 11 million bpd, and U.S. production C-OUT-T-EIA is around that level as well.
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Gold springs back from 17-month low
Gold rallied 1 percent on Friday, after falling to the lowest in nearly 17 months when weaker-than-expected US jobs data pushed the dollar lower and a move by the Chinese central bank lifted its currency.
Spot gold was up 0.60 percent at $1,214.79 an ounce in New York trade, after rallying 1 percent to $1,220.01. Earlier it dropped to $1,204, the lowest since March 15, 2017. US gold futures settled up 0.3 percent at $1,223.20 an ounce.
The dollar index turned negative after data showed US job growth slowed more than expected in July. Earlier, the dollar had climbed to a two-week high against a basket of major currencies and scaled a 14-month peak versus the Chinese yuan.
Spot gold, which was on track to close the week down 0.3 percent, its seventh weekly decline in the past eight, may fall toward the next support at $1,194, as it has resumed its downtrend from $1,309.30, according to Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao.
Among other precious metals, silver rose 0.7 percent to $15.41 an ounce, but was on track to close the week lower for the eighth straight week. Platinum climbed 0.8 percent to $828.99 an ounce, set to finish the week up 0.4 percent, its strongest since late-May. Palladium dipped 0.1 percent to $910.75 an ounce, on track to close the week down 0.8 percent.
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Global coffee exports rise 2.6pc in June
Global coffee exports rose 2.6 percent in June from a year earlier to 10.45 million 60kg bags, data from the International Coffee Organization (ICO) showed last Wednesday.
For the first nine months of the 2017/18 season, which began on Oct. 1, coffee exports rose 0.3 percent to total 90.86 million bags. Arabica coffee exports in June were at 6.51 million bags, a decline of 0.4 percent from the same month last season. Cumulative arabica exports for the season to date fell 1.5 percent to 57.06 million bags. Robusta coffee exports rose 7.9 percent in June from a year earlier to 3.95 million bags. Cumulative robusta exports for the season to date rose 3.6 percent to 33.8 million bags.
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Kuwait oil production hits 18-month high
Kuwait is pumping crude at a daily rate of 2.8 million barrels, the most since December 2016, the country’s oil minister Bakheet al-Rashidi said as quoted by S&P Platts last week. This is 90,000 bpd more than Kuwait’s June daily production and the figure highlights the difficulties the cartel faces in boosting production quickly enough to rein in prices: OPEC’s total, as estimated by analysts, only rose by 70,000 bpd in July.
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Bangladesh tea prices rally amid tight supplies
Tea prices in Bangladesh rose at the weekly auction for the 11th time in a row on strong demand for quality leaf and tight supplies. Bangladeshi tea fetched an average of 283.27 taka ($2.7) per kg in the port city of Chittagong last Tuesday, compared with 276.34 taka at the previous sale.
There was robust demand from buyers while supplies were lower than the last sale, an official at National Brokers said. About 4.3 percent of the 2.33 million kg offered in the auction was left unsold. At the previous auction, around 2.48 million kg was offered, of which 2.2 percent went unsold.
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Malaysian palm oil jumps to 2-week peak
Malaysian palm oil futures rose over 1 percent last Wednesday, a third straight day of gains, on the back of technical buying and as the market turned bullish on forecasts that the world’s top palm importer India is likely to receive below-normal monsoon rains in 2018.
The benchmark palm oil contract for October delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange was 0.8 percent higher at 2,212 ringgit ($544.29) a tonne at the end of the trading day. It earlier rose as much as 1.1 percent to 2,219 ringgit, its strongest levels since July 19. Trading volume stood at 39,245 lots of 25 tonnes each at the close of trade. India’s 260 million farmers depend on monsoon rains to grow crops such as rice, sugar cane, corn, cotton and soybeans.
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Copper slides on new trade tensions
Copper and other base metals slipped last Wednesday on fears of slower demand due to renewed US-China trade tensions and worries about slowing growth in top metals consumer China.
A source familiar with the matter said Washington plans to impose a 25 percent tariff on $200 billion of imported Chinese goods after initially setting them at 10 percent, escalating the dispute between the world’s two biggest economies.
Also weighing on sentiment was data showing that China’s manufacturing sector grew at the slowest pace in eight months in July as export orders declined. Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was down 2.1 percent at $6,169 a tonne, after falling 4.9 percent in July, but recently rebounding from a one-year low of $5,988 touched on July 19.
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NZ’s Fonterra milk production up 11pc
New Zealand’s Fonterra said on Tuesday that its total milk production in the region rose 11 percent in June, supported by improved conditions and winter milking. Its Australian milk production increased 3 percent in May, the company said in a statement.
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EU touts jump in soybean imports from US
EU soybean imports from the United States almost quadrupled early in the new marketing year, the European Union said, a week after it struck a deal with US President Donald Trump to avert a trade row, as buyers responded to a sharp drop in prices.
However, a spokeswoman for the Commission said the increase was thanks to market forces, rather than any concerted action on the part of the bloc in the wake of an transatlantic accord with Washington to fend off new tariffs.
As soy imports from Brazil and Paraguay fell sharply, US exports to the EU increased by 283 percent in the first five weeks of the 2018/2019 marketing year compared to the same period last year, the EU executive said last Wednesday. Just over a third of the EU’s imports of soybeans and soybean meal, mainly used in animal feed and in the production of soy milk, came from the United States, with Brazil remaining the main origin of EU imports.
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China sells 16,500 tonnes of cotton at auction
China sells 16,500 tonnes of cotton at auction of state reserves at average price of 14,929 yuan ($2,196.41) per tonne, according to industry website. Sales represents 55.11 percent of total cotton available at the auction.