By Srinivas Chowdary Sunkara // petrobazaar // 13th August, 2020.
Brent oil futures prices for Oct delivery went up 93 cents or 2.09% to settle at $45.43 a barrel on London based ICE futures Europe exchange and WTI oil Sep futures closed $1.06 or 2.55% up to $42.67 a barrel on NYMEX last night. In Shanghai, Crude oil main contract futures dropped by .9 Yuan or .31% at 293.5 Yuan/barrel while MCX crude oil current month futures dragged high by Rs.68 to settle at Rs.3189 a barrel in India. Brent premium over WTI narrowed down to $2.76 during the session.
The world crude oil benchmark futures price indexes moved up above 2% after the government data showed U.S inventories were drawn across the board during the last week. Increasing virus cases and dimmed hopes on U.S aid keep weigh on oil prices. Turning to weekly numbers, EIA reported 4.5Mb, 0.7 Mb and 2.3 Mb drawings in Crude, Gasoline and Distillates respectively for the week ending 7th August which signed the improvement in demand outlook, that supported oil prices. U.S produced crude oil 300Kbpd lower from previous week at 10.7Mbpd. Refinery throughput was increased coupled with ramping up utilization showed that refineries are resuming normal production. Imports were decreased while exports were up also might be another reason for falling stocks. Key storage bub, Cushing stocks were reported accumulated.
OPEC revised down its projection of global demand by almost 100,000 b/d to 90.63 Mbpd for 2020 citing the lower economic activity in non-OECD countries as the cause. Global oil demand for 2020 was unchanged at 97.63 Mbpd. In contrast, EIA raised its demand outlook by 250,000 bpd from last month's forecast to 93.14 Mbpd for 2020 and by 280,000 bpd to 100.16 Mbpd for 2021 with ref to STEO. This heightened the level of uncertainty over the short term demand outlook.
Today morning, Oil Indexes opened with slight gap down during Asian hours as the market paused for fresh cues today. IEA monthly projections are awaited today. Good day to all.
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