WTI $50.02 -$2.84, Brent $56.43 -$1.91, Diff $6.41 +93c, NG $2.68 +8c

Oil price

A very short blog this afternoon as I have been out spending some time with Interactive Investor, link to that shoot as soon as I get it. Tomorrow will be late too as it is the Chariot Capital markets session all morning and I’m on IG Group TV at lunchtime…

The oil price looks very exposed to me and I can hear those bullish chartists getting their excuses lined up. While there were positive things to be taken from both the Opec and the IEA reports the overriding situation in the market right now is that there is still oversupply. Whilst we are in contango that’s fine but keeps oil around the market for some time. Also the API inventory stats last night were better than expected, a build of 1.6m barrels against consensus of 3.7m was ok but lets see the EIA numbers tonight before we rejoice.

Tullow Oil

I’m still not back on the invite list for Tullow Oil presentations and I havent even been very rude about them either! todays news was pretty much as expected right down to the dividend ‘suspension’ or pass as it should be called. Small E&P companies are not dividend payers and when you are saving $500m over five years you cant distribute non-existent profits, end of. having said all that I am watching the stock carefully and while its not on the buy list some people may take a longer view and put it in theirs.

And finally… 

Super Mario scores his first grown-up goal for the HubCap Stealers as they nick a useful win over Spurs, the Gooners beat Leicester and none of their players was assaulted whilst on the pitch, Hull City Tigers cruised past dismal Villa who according to their manager have ’13 Cup Finals’ to play, or 13 losers medals to pick up…Elsewhere the Maccams let the manager-less Super Hoops record their first away win of the season.

Tonight sees a full programme of games with the highlight maybe the Toffees at Stamford Bridge, the Hammers at the Saints and Alan Pardew hosts the Magpies at the Palace…

Finally I get a lot of correspondence, and apologies if I take some time to reply, here’s one I had yesterday, and there’s me thinking most of you like the ‘and finally…’ As Tommy Cooper would say, ‘I’ll take that as a condiment’.

Malcolm – if you would please remove the schoolboy info about football and cricket from your blog, I suspect that many of the serious readers would give a bit more credence to your otherwise timely, refreshingly independent, and informative slant on the Oil business………