Oil is close to flat during APAC trading today with Brent around $80.70/bbl after an intraday low of $80.76 and WTI $77.44 following a drop to $77.25/bbl. US President-elect Trump said he’ll declare a national energy emergency to unlock powers, but the impact of his administration on oil prices remains unclear. The USD index is down 0.3%.
- Trump wants to use a “national energy emergency” to be able to increase domestic oil and gas production and reverse Biden’s climate change policies, according to Bloomberg. Uncertainty remains elevated though with no details on how this declaration would be used or its impact on domestic and global markets or if he will even be able to use it. Thus, there has been little market response to the news.
- In response to questions on the issue, Trump said on Sunday “we’re going to be using our emergency powers to allow countries and entrepreneurs and people with a lot of money build big plants, AI plants, ... We need double the energy that we already have”.
- Action on sanctions against Iran and Russia and tariffs on Canada, a large oil supplier to the US, are also significant uncertainties that oil markets are awaiting direction on. The Treasury secretary nominee Bessent has indicated that measures against Russia should be tightened.
- The US is closed for the Martin Luther King holiday but attention is on President-elect Trump’s inauguration later today and which executive orders he’ll sign on the first day.
- Later the Eurogroup meeting takes place and German December PPI, euro area November construction and the BoC business survey are released.