By Srinivas Chowdary Sunkara // petrobazaar // 27th March 2020.
Brent oil prices for May delivery slipped $1.05 to settle at $26.34 on London based ICE futures Europe exchange while WTI oil futures to be delivered in May fell $1.89 to close at $22.6 a barrel last night on NYMEX. In Shanghai, Crude oil main contract futures dropped by 5.3 Yuan or -2.01% at 258.7 Yuan/barrel where as MCX crude oil current month futures contract prices in India sank Rs.173 to settle at Rs.1787 a barrel yesterday. Brent premium widened to $3.74 over WTI during the session.
The crude oil bench mark futures price index curves moved down after a rise in last three sessions due to prospectus of dwindling demand across the market amid travel bans and lockdowns due to fears of spreading corona virus offsetting the hopes of stimulus package will bring back the economic activity. On the other hand, producing countries like Saudi and Russia are set to flood more oil into market after the spearheads failed to come into an agreement in the early March meeting. Bank of America told clients that U.S is heading towards recession due to spread of corona virus . Many other banks slashed their estimates for both the benchmarks for the year 2020. Turning to weekly data, EIA reported surprise increase in U.S crude oil stocks by 1.6Mbpd from the previous week negating analysts expectation of drawings while gasoline and distillates inventories are decreased by 1.5 Mb and 0.7Mb last week. U.S production numbers slipped to 13Mbpd. Today morning, Asian markets opened in green and the indexes does not demonstrate any firm trend so far.
Good day to all.
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