Brent crude oil futures returned earlier gains in early Asian trading due to rising market concerns about rising demand and OPEC's lower expectations for global oil demand growth in 2024 and 2025.

As of 12:00 Beijing time, the October contract price for Brent crude oil futures was $81.64 per barrel, down 66 cents from the August 12 settlement price. At that time, the contract's closing price was $2.64 higher than the previous trading day.

The September contract price for WTI crude oil futures was $79.49 per barrel, down 57 cents from the August 12 settlement price. At that time, the contract's closing price was up $3.22 from the previous trading day.

For the first time, OPEC lowered its forecast for global oil demand growth in 2024 and 2025. In its latest monthly oil market report, the 2024 demand growth forecast was lowered from 2.25 million barrels per day when it was first published in July to 2.11 million barrels per day. OPEC said that this adjustment is mainly based on the decline in expectations for the growth of Chinese oil demand and actual data for the first half of 2024. China's oil demand is currently expected to increase by 0.07 million b/d this year, a decrease of 0.06 million b/d from last month's report. Meanwhile, OPEC also lowered its 2025 oil demand growth forecast by 0.06 million b/d to 1.78 million barrels per day, mainly due to lower consumption growth in the Middle East than expected.

US President Joe Biden's administration plans to triple the size of the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) crude oil procurement program to take advantage of the recent drop in oil prices. The US Department of Energy (DOE) said it plans to purchase up to 6 million barrels of crude oil from SPR's Bryan Mound site between January and March instead of following the smaller 2 million barrels purchase plan announced last week. The Department of Energy adjusted the procurement scale based on current market conditions being more favorable to taxpayers.

According to the Ministry of Energy, Oman's crude oil production in July was 759,800 barrels per day, the same as in June, and 0.08 million b/d higher than its OPEC+ production target. Its current target is 759,000 barrels per day, including a voluntary cut of 42,000 barrels per day agreed at the OPEC+ Ministerial Meeting in November last year. Oman's production in May was 100 b/d higher than the target, while in April it was 400 b/d lower. The country surpassed the targets of 13,000 b/d, 2,900 b/d, and 500 b/d in January, February and March, respectively.

(The above content comes from the latest opinion of Argus, an independent international energy and commodity price assessment agency)