Commodities: All eyes on new Saudi energy minister

Commodity markets gained heading into the long weekend Stateside and in the UK, even in the face of a strengthening greenback and ahead of the 2 June summit of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

For the most part, analysts appeared to be skeptical that the next meeting of most of the world´s top oil producers, in Vienna, would yield any change to the group´s policies, which were aimed at curbing the rise of tight oil producers.

However, it was also set to be the first for Saudi Arabia´s new energy minister, Khalid Al-Falih.

Some market commentary was suggesting Saudi Arabia might be tempted to embark on a new policy of increasing its own output and market share.

That would come amid recent warnings from some analysts that oil prices might already be headed lower in the backhalf of the year anyhow.

Against that backdrop, front month West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures closed up by 2 cents to $49.33 per barrel on the NYMEX.

To take note of, there were unconfirmed reports overnight of fresh attacks by militants against oil installations in the Niger Delta.

July 2016 natural gas futures advanced 0.84% to $2.17/MMBtu on NYMEX, alongside a gain in RBOB gasoline futures of 0.77% to $1.6319 per gallon.

August 2016 gold futures on COMEX retreated 0.54% to $1,213.80/oz., with similarly-dated silver futures off by 0.12% to $16.25/oz..

Spot platinum was especially weak, giving back 1.73% to close at $976.35/oz..

Copper futures on the other hand did well, closing up by 0.55% to $2.1140 a pound on COMEX.

Agricultural futures were uniformly higher by the close of the day on Euronext LIFFE.

Cocoa futures were particularly strong, rising 1.8% to £2,205.00 per metric tonne.

Robusta coffee ended the day higher by 0.6% to $1,628.00 per metric tonne and those for white sugar gained 0.4% to $486.10 per metric tonne.

Commodity markets proved resilient to the rise in the greenback, with the Bloomberg Commodity index ending the session up by 0.13% at 85.47 points.

In parallel, the spot US dollar index gained 0.37% to 95.521 points.