Oil steady as recession fears dispel positive signals from China

Oil prices were flat on Monday as concerns that rising inflation and energy costs could push the global economy into recession as China continued to loosen its monetary policy.

Brent crude futures rose 17 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $91.80 a barrel by 0915 GMT, recovering from a 6.4 percent drop last week.

US West Texas Intermediate crude recorded $85.67 a barrel, up six cents, or 0.1 percent, after falling 7.6 percent last week.

On Monday, China’s central bank kept the interest rate unchanged for a second month, indicating that it will continue to maintain an accommodative monetary policy.

China is expected to publish trade and economic data this week. Although China’s third-quarter GDP growth may rebound from the previous quarter, Xi’s tough COVID-19 policy has left the world’s second-largest economy facing what is likely to be its worst annual performance in nearly half a century.

This comes as a strong dollar and continued interest rate hikes by the US central bank limit price gains.

On Sunday, countries from the OPEC + group expressed their support for the decision to cut production that was approved this month, after the United States said that Saudi Arabia had pushed some countries in the group to take this decision, in an escalation of a war of words with Riyadh.

OPEC + pledged on the fifth of October to cut production by two million barrels per day, which will lead to an actual decrease of about one million barrels per day because some members are already producing less than the target level.

Despite this, Saudi Arabia will keep the volume of exports to major Asian markets steady in November.