By Srinivas Chowdary Sunkara // petrobazaar // 15th July, 2022.
Brent oil futures for Sep futures prices slipped 47 cents or 0.47 pct to settle at $99.1 a barrel on London based ICE futures Europe exchange while WTI oil August futures prices went down 52 cents or 0.54% to close at $95.78 a barrel on NYMEX last night. In Shanghai, Crude oil main contract futures prices have fallen down 13.2Yuans to 628.3 Yuan/bbl where as MCX crude oil front month futures prices traded Rs.89 or 1.16 pct lower to Rs.7611 a barrel yesterday. Brent traded at a premium of $3.32 a barrel over WTI during the session.
The world crude oil price index curves continued to demonstrate downside momentum as investors focused on the prospectus of a large U.S rate hike later this month that could stem inflation but at the same time hit oil demand. Oil prices tumbled on recession fears despite of rise in U.S crude stocks and drop in refined stocks last week. Investors are more focused on strong dollar which in turn make oil costly that may deter oil demand. European commission cut down its economic growth forecast and raising the expected inflation rate to 7.6% showed bearish signals for oil demand. Sank in Chinese oil imports in June due to refineries anticipation of more lockdowns to curb new virus cases also pressed oil complex.
Focusing on weekly reports, EIA reported 3.6Mbpd draws in U.S crude stocks while gasoline and distillates stocks were piled up by 5.8Mbpd and 2.7Mbpd respectively. Domestic production numbers were down by 100kbpd during the last week. Crude inventories rose on another big release from strategic reserves where as increased crude throughput into refineries might have caused jump in refined products. Turning to supplies side, U.S president is reaching KSA today, Flying directly from Israel. He is expected to call for more supplies from gulf countries. OPEC countries are pumping at max capacity and it is unclear how far they can stretch to open more taps. Today, Asian markets opened in green and both the benchmarks are moving towards weekly loss.
Good day to all.
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