Credit Suisse triggers anxiety, international crude oil and natural gas collectively plummet

Shortly after the U.S. stock market opened on Wednesday (March 15), international energy prices collectively plummeted, as unease caused by Credit Suisse disrupted global financial markets and offset expectations for rising demand for oil and natural gas.

Specific market conditions show that as of press time, the price of light crude oil futures for April delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 6% to $67.05 a barrel, the lowest level since December 2021.

London Brent crude futures for May delivery fell 5.6% to $73.09 a barrel. In addition, RBOB gasoline and heating oil also fell to varying degrees.

In terms of natural gas, the price of Henry Hub natural gas futures for April delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell by 5.6% to $2.42 per million British thermal units.

On Monday, Robert Kiyosaki, author of the best-selling investment and financial management book "Rich Dad Poor Dad", said in an interview that given that the U.S. bond market is collapsing, he predicted that the next bank to fail would be Credit Suisse.

Yesterday, Credit Suisse stated in its 2022 report that it had discovered "significant weaknesses" in the internal control of financial reporting. The bank is trying to recover from a series of scandals that have severely damaged investor and client confidence, with outflows of more than 110 billion Swiss francs in the fourth quarter.

According to media reports within a few days, the National Bank of Saudi Arabia, one of the largest and most important shareholders of Switzerland's second largest bank, announced that it would rule out the possibility of further capital injection into Credit Suisse.

The British media quoted three unnamed people familiar with the matter as saying that Credit Suisse has called on the Swiss National Bank and the Swiss Financial Supervisory Authority (Finma) to publicly express its support. But so far no response has been received.

Not long before the press time, the price of credit default swaps (CDS) of Credit Suisse reached a crisis level, which revived the market's panic about the collapse of Silicon Valley banks. Someone is worried. If Credit Suisse failed like Silicon Valley Bank, it could trigger a major financial crisis that would hit fuel demand.

Price Futures Group analyst Phil Flynn said, "We see that the oil market is detaching from oil stocks, and oil prices are clearly more concerned about the potential collapse of the global economy." Commodities generally fell.

Yesterday, OPEC also stated in its monthly oil report that due to seasonally sluggish demand, the global oil market may experience a slight oversupply in the next quarter, and lowered its 2023 global crude oil demand forecast by an average of 200,000 barrels per day.