(Bloomberg) — Oil sank as the outlook for the world\u2019s largest economy darkened after a barrage of poor US data and tariff announcements, weighing on the prospects for energy demand growth.<\/p>\n
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West Texas Intermediate crude fell 2.8% to settle near $67 a barrel on Friday, the biggest plunge in a single day since June 24. Prices also came under pressure as investors widely anticipate that OPEC and its allies will decide to add more supplies to the market during an upcoming weekend meeting.<\/p>\n
US jobs growth cooled sharply over the past three months, while factory activity contracted in July at the fastest clip in nine months, in a sign the economy is shifting into a lower gear amid widespread uncertainty. The swath of bearish data increased investor concerns that the impact of US President Donald Trump\u2019s ever-changing tariff rates \u2014 which had so far been muted \u2014 has finally begun to weigh on economic growth.<\/p>\n
The weaker data come as Trump finalized plans for tariffs on several countries, including a higher rate on neighbor Canada, though oil is exempt.<\/p>\n
\u201cTariffs are now officially a part of daily life. With the catalyst in the rearview, focus must shift to the fallout,\u201d said Daniel Ghali, a commodity strategist at TD Securities.<\/p>\n
Oil traders had been forced to the sidelines in recent weeks as numerous wild cards surrounding US trade policy and OPEC+ production confounded supply-and-demand outlooks. The unpredictable environment, which initially caused wild price swings earlier in the year, has dampened risk-on sentiment and sapped volatility from the market.<\/p>\n
The potential onset of an economic slowdown threatens to coincide with a period for oversupply widely expected for later this year. Second-quarter earnings for oil industry giants blew out expectations, with record oil production blunting the impact of lower crude prices. Exxon Mobil Corp. pumped the most oil for this time of year in a quarter century, and expressed little intention of slowing down US shale output. Meanwhile, Chevron Corp. is expected to lift output to an all-time high of almost 4 million barrels of oil equivalent a day later this year.<\/p>\n
Fueling further bearish sentiment, traders expect OPEC+ to agree on another 548,000 barrels-a-day boost. The cartel is scheduled to meet this weekend.<\/p>\n
Story Continues <\/p>\n
\u201cWith those dynamics, we probably see some price pressure in the second half of the year,\u201d Chevron Chief Financial Officer Eimear Bonner said in an interview. \u201cWe\u2019re positioned for all price environments so if we see the softening, if it does in fact play out, we\u2019re in a good spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, there are bullish factors at play. Prices eased off of intraday lows on Friday after Trump said in a social-media post that he deployed two nuclear submarines in response to \u201chighly provocative\u201d statements from former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.<\/p>\n
\u201cTraders appear to be taking a wait-and-see approach, as there\u2019s still time before the negotiation deadline and this is more of a deterrent action,\u201d said Rebecca Babin, a senior energy trader at CIBC Private Wealth Group.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s decision to deploy the submarines is in line with his hardening stance against Russia over recent weeks. His threat to impose tariffs on nations buying barrels from Moscow had helped propel oil prices to the highest in a month earlier this week. The US President singled out India for buying Russian crude, a move that caused the nation\u2019s state-run refiners to come up with plans to buy alternatives, a directive amounting to scenario planning, according to a person familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
On Friday, one Indian refiner snapped up large volumes of supplies from the US and UAE.<\/p>\n
–With assistance from Rong Wei Neo, Alex Longley and Kevin Crowley.<\/p>\n
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\u00a92025 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Bloomberg) — Oil sank as the outlook for the world\u2019s largest economy darkened after a barrage of poor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[7904,28,101,41314,123,942],"class_list":["post-54352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-bloomberg","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-oil-traders","tag-opec","tag-president-donald-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}