Crude oil prices ended lower on demand worries as the coronavirus outbreak continued to plague the market.
Goldman Sachs says 2020 global growth will take a modest hit from the outbreak of coronavirus, assuming an aggressive response from authorities in China and elsewhere to bring the rate of new infections down sharply by the end of the first quarter. Annual-average global GDP growth in 2020 will be downgraded by 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points, the bank estimated.
ConocoPhillips Chief Executive Officer Ryan Lance warned that oil demand growth could be hit by 100,000 to 200,000 barrel per day this year due to the outbreak of the flu-like virus in China. ConocoPhillips has cut its 2020 production forecast range to 1.23 million boepd to 1.27 million boepd, excluding Libya, from its prior range of 1.24 million boepd to 1.31 million boepd. The company is expecting a hit from a third-party pipeline outage at the Kebabangan field in Malaysia.
China National Health Commission said that as of Tuesday night, a total of 24,324 cases have been confirmed and 490 people have died in the country. There were 65 additional deaths, the biggest single-day tally since the first fatalities emerged last month, and all of them came from the epicentre of the outbreak in Hubei province. The WHO said Tuesday that the dramatic measures taken by China had provided a "window of opportunity" to halt transmission, while calling for more global solidarity to combat the virus. The WHO has said the outbreak does not yet constitute a "pandemic".
The White House's top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said on Tuesday that China's coronavirus would delay a surge in U.S. exports to China expected from the Phase 1 trade deal set to take effect later this month. Kudlow said the outbreak would not have a catastrophic effect on business supply chains.
Late on Tuesday, industry group the American Petroleum Institute said that U.S. crude inventories rose by 4.2 mil bbls in the week to Jan 31, with stockpiles at the Cushing, Oklahoma hub higher by 957,000 bbls.