- President Donald Trump on Friday said he’s directed the U.S. Department of Energy to purchase crude oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
- The move was made in an effort to assist U.S. energy producers, which have been battered this week amid an oil price war between OPEC and Russia.
- “We’re going to fill [the strategic reserve] right up to the top, saving the American taxpayer billions and billions of dollars, helping our oil industry,” Trump said. Source CNBC
Italy expects debt to rise to about 160% of gross domestic product by the end of this year despite a smaller-than-forecast contraction of the economy, officials familiar with ongoing budget talks said. The new figures, which are provisional and still subject to change, see the economy expanding 6% in 2021, the officials said, asking not to be named discussing confidential deliberations. Source Bloomberg Quint
It is less than two months since U.S. President Donald Trump travelled to Texas to declare that the U.S. energy industry, laid low by this year’s oil price crash, was back on its feet. “We’re OK now,” the president told the assembled crowd.
But bankruptcy numbers released this week tell a different story. Another 16 upstream U.S. oil and gas companies — producers and service providers — hit the wall in August, the same number as in July, according to law firm Haynes and Boone. Source Financial Post
The Bank of Italy said Italy’s public debt hit a new high of 2,560.5 billion euros in July, up 29.9 billion with respect to June. Source Ansa
