US employment growth in August was less than expected. A drop in the unemployment rate to 4.2 percent suggests a continued orderly slowdown in the labor market and likely does not warrant a sharp interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve this month.

Crude oil inventories in the United States fell by a staggering 7.4 million barrels for the week ending August 30, according to The American Petroleum Institute (API). Analysts had expected a far smaller 993,000-barrel dip. For the week prior, the API reported a 3.4 million barrel decrease in crude inventories.
Signals that Libya’s two main political factions are nearing an agreement on appointing a new head of the country’s central bank helped lower oil prices.

This agreement can lead to the resumption of production of 700,000 barrels of oil in the country’s fields and as a result increase the country’s oil exports.

Also on Thursday, media reported that OPEC+ had decided to delay its potential partial reversal of production cuts by two months. This decision was taken after the prices reached the lowest in 9 months
OPEC+’s plan was to begin the careful process of rolling back the current voluntary production cuts starting next month, which would see 180,000 bpd added back into the market in October. OPEC+ has long maintained that its plan to roll back the cuts was a tentative one and dependent on market balance.

 
Some analysts believe that OPEC+’s decision to delay the rollback of the cuts would tighten inventories by between 100,000 bpd and 200,000 bpd in the final quarter of the year.
As the peace talks in the Middle East reached a deadlock, unrest in the region continues. The Yemeni Houthis reportedly hit two tankers in the Red Sea on Monday, one of them Saudi-flagged and the other was a Panama-flagged vessel named Blue Lagoon.