By Srinivas Chowdary Sunkara // petrobazaar // 23th July, 2020.
Brent oil futures prices for Sep delivery inched up 3 cents to settle at $44.29 on London based ICE futures Europe exchange and WTI crude oil futures to be delivered in Sep edged up 6 cents to close at $41.9 a barrel on NYMEX. In Shanghai, Crude oil main contract futures rose by 3.3 Yuan or 1.11% at 301.3 Yuan/barrel while MCX crude oil August month futures contract prices rose Rs.7 to $3131 amid volatile trading last night. Brent traded at a premium of $2.39 over WTI during the session.
The world crude oil price indexes moved up today despite of bearish weekly U.S stock numbers. The weak dollar support the oil prices since the weak dollar against the basket of currencies spurs the buying of dollar denominated products. The further upside momentum is getting capped by the build in U.S crude stocks during the last week. As per the EIA report, U.S crude stocks piled up 4.9 Mb and distillates stocks were up 1.1Mb while gasoline stocks were drawn by 1.8Mb. Domestic production numbers keep unchanged at 11.1Mb, Net imports were down by 77K while exports rose by 450K. Refinery throughput stalled despite rebounding refinery margins. Implied product demand was down this week. Distillates leading the way lower and gasoline demand was largely flat while Jet fuel numbers surprised a bit. Recovery is seen as slowing down, May be due to increasing no of COVID cases. This report can be viewed as bullish as the forward looking indicators like normalizing gasoline storage and improving air travel could prompt higher refinery throughput which would offer a tailwind on crude.
Good day to all
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