Crude oil lower; recession fears rise as central banks hike en masse

By Peter Nurse

Investing.com -- Oil prices weakened Thursday as a series of interest rate increases by a number of central banks raised concerns about slowing growth and thus weakened demand in 2023.

By 09:30 ET (14:30 GMT), U.S. crude futures traded 0.4% lower at $76.94 a barrel, while the Brent contract fell 0.3% to $82.45 a barrel.

The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank, all increased their benchmark interest rates by 50 basis points earlier Thursday as part of their ongoing battle against inflation at historic highs.

This followed the same move by the U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday and occurs even as most of these economies teeter on the brink of recession.

Chinese economic data showed that the world's second biggest economy, and largest crude importer, lost more momentum in November. Both industrial production and retail sales came in weaker than expected, reporting their worst readings in six months as COVID-19 cases surged.

TC Energy (NYSE:TRP) restarted a segment of its Keystone oil pipeline after a significant leak forced the line to be shut down a week ago. However, the pipeline, which delivers up to 600,000 barrels a day of Canadian crude into the U.S., is still not fully functional, adding volatility to oil markets.

Adding to the negative sentiment was the news that U.S. crude oil stockpiles rose by more than 10 million barrels last week, according to data from the Energy Information Administration, despite the outage of the Keystone pipeline.

"Withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the world's largest supply of emergency crude oil, continued over the week and SPR crude oil inventory dropped by around 4.7MMbbls, limiting the total crude oil inventory increase to 5.5MMbbls for the week, still the biggest increase since March 2022," said analysts at ING, in a note.

That said, both crude benchmarks are on course to post weekly gains of over 6%, bouncing from the lowest levels since December 2021 seen last week.

Goldman Sachs is optimistic for the commodities asset class next year, saying it will be the best-performing asset class in 2023, with investors seeing returns of more than 40%.

The first quarter may be "bumpy" due to economic weakness in the U.S. and China, the influential investment bank said, but scarcities of raw materials from oil to natural gas and metals will boost prices after that.