Energy market in a week: Europe believed that Gazprom's Ukrainian transit would remain

This week, the markets stopped fearing that it would be even worse in the Middle East. Oil prices have gone down and are being held up by talk that now Iran can strike another blow at Israel — from Iraq. With gas, it turned out to be more radical. New talk that the Ukrainian transit of Russian gas will still continue has cut fuel quotes in Europe. The markets continue to be ruled by rumors, news and traders who play it down, then vice versa.

Oil

Israel still struck back at Iran. But since it turned out to be "quiet" and did not touch the oil and gas infrastructure, the market exhaled, and oil fell in price — by $ 5 per barrel. On October 29, quotations of the benchmark North Sea Brent variety dropped to $ 70.8.

This would have remained the case if there had not been talks about a new retaliatory strike by Iran. Israeli intelligence suggests that Iran is preparing to attack Israel from Iraqi territory in the coming days, possibly before the US presidential election on November 5, Axios reported citing Israeli sources.

According to them, the retaliatory strike involves the use of a large number of drones and ballistic missiles, and carrying out an attack with the help of pro-Iranian militias in Iraq may be Tehran's attempt to avoid another Israeli attack on Iran.

"This brings back to the table the possibility that Israel may make another attempt to attack Iran," Phil Flynn, senior analyst at Price Futures Group, told Reuters.

Also, oil quotes supported rumors that OPEC + may again postpone the start of an increase in oil production, which was previously postponed to December, and statistics from China, where government stimulus measures are having an effect.

By Friday, the quotes had recovered to $ 73.4.

Gas

New rumors about the possibility of extending the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine have brought down gas prices in Europe to September figures. During the week, gas supplies for a month in advance from the Dutch TTF hub immediately dropped by 11% to $ 438 per thousand cubic meters.

At the beginning, one of the largest investment banks, Goldman Sachs, warned about the risks of lower prices if the transit stop scenario does not work.

"Any deviation from the status quo will mean higher supplies from Russia is against consensus and, consequently, low bearish global gas prices," analyst Samantha Dart wrote.

The forecast of the American investment bank was matched by Bloomberg reports that companies from Hungary and Slovakia is close to signing a contract for 12-14 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Azerbaijan, which will go through Russia and Ukraine.

The main locomotive of the negotiations, Slovak SPP, however, did not confirm the proximity of the deal, but so far this has not affected prices.

But along with gas prices, coal prices also dropped. Coal supplies from the Antwerp-Rotterdam-Amsterdam hub (ARA) for a month returned to the figures of two weeks ago — about $ 119 per ton. The decrease for the week was $2.