Commodities: WTI futures plunge below $30/bbl

Oil futures endured another volatile session on Tuesday as the WTI front-month contract fell below $30 per barrel, while metals saw lacklustre trading in Europe.

At 1748 GMT, WTI was 0.91% or 27 cents lower at $29.42 per barrel, while Brent was down 2.49% or 82 cents to $32.06 per barrel.

Earlier in the session, Goldman Sachs repeated its warning that crude oil futures might fall below $20 per barrel in 2016. The supply-demand imbalance in the market was such that in some geographies there was no capacity left to store surplus oil, the investment bank’s head of commodities research, Jeff Currie, told Bloomberg in an interview.

“Once you breach storage capacity, prices have to spike below cash costs because you have to shut in production almost immediately,” Currie added.

Meanwhile, analysts at Morgan Stanley said rebalancing may not come until mid-2017. "Despite the myriad announcements of capital expenditure cuts, production has yet to respond enough to rebalance the market," the investment bank said in a note to clients.

Away from oil markets, precious metals had a decidedly lacklustre session. COMEX gold futures contract for April delivery fell 0.26% or $3.10 to $1,194.80 an ounce after stacking up gains of over 3.5% overnight, but spot gold was 0.51% or $6.30 higher at $1,195.73 an ounce.

COMEX silver futures fell 0.04% or two cents to $15.42 an ounce, while spot platinum rose 1.14% or $10.53 to $935.48 an ounce.

Base metal contracts saw red across the London Metal Exchange board, with the much scrutinised three-month copper delivery futures contract down 3.6% to $4,471.00 per tonne at 1635 GMT.

Concurrently, primary aluminium (down 1.2%), zinc (down 3.4%), lead (down 1.2%), tin (down 0.3%) and nickel (down 1.8%) three-month futures joined copper in posting declines.

Liz Grant, senior account executive at Sucden Financial, said, “Having edged to $1,200 overnight, gold trading was choppy, edging lower through the morning. With the risk button in the "off" position, base metals struggled to hold the higher prices seen overnight and through the London morning.”

Finally, headline agricultural commodity futures were largely on mixed turf. CBOT wheat (down 0.41%), CBOT corn (down 0.38%) and ICE cotton (down 0.25%) futures headed lower, and ICE cocoa (up 0.03%) and CME live cattle (up 0.29%) headed higher.