Oil Set For Fifth Consecutive Weekly Drop As Coronavirus Hits Demand | OilPrice.com

Oil Set For Fifth Consecutive Weekly Drop As Coronavirus Hits Demand | OilPrice.com:

Oil prices were on track for a fifth weekly decline early on Friday, weighed down by the loss of demand in China amid the coronavirus outbreak while OPEC and Russia scramble to come up with a unified position on how to contain the price slide.

At 7:07 a.m. EDT on Friday, WTI Crude was down 0.67 percent at $50.61 while Brent Crude traded down 0.44 percent at $54.67. Oil prices were on course for the longest run of weekly declines since November 2018, according to Bloomberg estimates.  

This week was yet another week in which the market was focused on the demand destruction the deadly virus is causing with all the travel restrictions and thousands of canceled flights to, from, and within China. 


Due to weak fuel demand and depressed industrial activity, Chinese refiners—from the biggest refiner in Asia, Sinopec, to the independent refiners in Shandong—are cutting refinery runs, while commodity trading houses and oil majors are scrambling to find spot buyers for crude oil outside China.