First Look: Oil heads for a second straight weekly loss as Iran downplays Israel's attack

Oil trades lower, around $82, following Israeli attack on Iran
- Oil is heading for a second consecutive weekly loss, with prices down about $5.50/Bbl from last week’s high
- The IMF said yesterday that Saudi Arabia will require an average oil price of $96.20/Bbl to keep its budget balanced, a 21% increase from the IMF’s previous forecast
Israel retaliates against Iran (BBG)
- Israel launched airstrikes against Iran last night in retaliation for Iran’s recent attack on Israel
- The scale of the operation was limited and seemed to cause little damage, while Iranian state media has downplayed the attack
- The limited nature of the attack and the response from Iran could imply that hostilities between the two countries may not escalate further, avoiding a wider regional conflict

Natural gas prices head for a modest weekly loss amid overhanging storage surplus
- May ’24 Henry Hub is up 1.5c this morning to trade around $1.772/MMBtu
- The Summer ’24 strip is up 1.9c to $2.249 and Winter ‘24/’25 strip is up 1.1c to $3.414
- Yesterday’s EIA report showed a 50 Bcf injection into Lower 48 gas storage for the week ending April 12, cutting the surplus to the five-year average by 11 Bcf to 622 Bcf, and the Y-o-Y surplus to 424 Bcf
- Today's Euro Ensemble indicates that despite regional variations, average temperatures in the lower 48 states remained unchanged, with a forecast of gradually warming temperatures into early May
U.S. LNG export plants see rise in natural gas flows, Freeport among key facilities (P&GJ)
- Natural gas flows to U.S. LNG export plants increased to 10.8 Bcf/d on Thursday from a 15-month low of 9.2 Bcf/d on Tuesday, marking a 17% rise
- Feedgas at Freeport LNG is expected to reach 0.3 Bcf/d, signaling partial resumption with one train coming back online post-outage
- Freeport LNG's Trains 1 and 2 remain shut until May for inspections and repairs; Train 3, which experienced a trip on April 9, is in the process of restarting
- Average gas flows to U.S. LNG export facilities fell to 11.9 Bcf/d in April from 13.1 Bcf/d in March, weighing on gas demand