crude oil brent futures for June delivery inched up 23 cents to $89.65 a barrel while WTI oil futures for May delivery changed 20 cents up to $85.43 a barrel on Wednesday at the time of reporting. Both the benchmarks logged in losses during the last two sessions. Brent futures premium over WTI widened to $4.19 a barrel during the session.

crude benchmark curves flirt upside after moving down during the previous session on renewed uncertainty about the security of supplies from Middle East. Escalation of geo-political tensions outweighed a bigger than expected build in U.S crude inventories. Weekly numbers out. API expected that U.S crude stocks piled up by 3.034Mbpd while reporting a small jump of 0.12Mbpd in distillates. Gasoline stocks are dipped by 0.6090Mbpd during the last week. EIA numbers are awaited later today. consensus is on stock build. On the supply side, Platts survey reported that OPEC+ output rises slightly in March to 41.25Mbpd. Turning to technicals, Fund managers preferred to build oil and gas futures and options as per last week report. Bulls continued to support crude markets, trusting escalation of political tensions will support crude prices. I expect profit booking at the end of the week.