Crude oil price largely unchanged on 15th May, 2024. Brent oil July futures are trading up 14 cents or 0.17 pct to $82.52 a barrel on London based ICE Futures Europe exchange. WTI oil June futures prices moving up 17 cents or 0.218 pct to $78.19 a barrel on NYMEX at the time of reporting. Both the benchmarks closed down yesterday for the third session in a row during this week. Brent premium over WTI widened to $4.36 a barrel during the session on 15-5-2024.
Crude oil price index curves are moving straight while crude prices are on slippery slope. crude oil prices today rose on fundamentals. Expectation of strong demand, Weakening dollar and falling U.S stocks and positive msg from inflation data are the existing fundamentals prevailed in the market that kept flour to oil prices. Turning to data, IEA MOR trimmed its forecast for 2024 oil demand growth by 140Kbpd to 1.1Mbpd. The report also said that oil demand will shrink due to expected weaker demand from OECD countries. Prices will remain range bound between $80-$90 through 2Q24. On the weekly data side, API estimated that U.S crude oil stocks fell by 3.104Mbpd while gasoline stocks sank by 1.269Mbd where as distillates rose by 673,000 barrel during last week. EIA will confirm numbers later today. consensus is on drawings in U.S stocks. Numbers spur some volatility this week while markets are waiting for new clues like suppliers call for supply cuts.
