Published: May 17th, 2023 at 7:36 am ET
Oil futures edged higher on Wednesday as investors expressed concern over the demand outlook for crude as they await weekly US supply data.
price action
market driver
Crude declined on Tuesday after disappointing economic data from China. Demand concerns have plagued crude, with both WTI and Brent posting four straight weekly declines.
“Oil…
Oil futures edged higher on Wednesday as investors expressed concern over the demand outlook for crude as they await weekly US supply data.
price action
- West Texas Intermediate crude CL00 CL.1 CLM23 for June delivery rose 25 cents, or 0.4%, to $71.11 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
- July Brent crude BRN00 BRNN23, the global benchmark, was up 22 cents, or 0.3%, at $75.13 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.
- Back on Nymex, June gasoline RBM23 rose 0.6% to $2.494 a gallon, while June heating oil HOM23 rose 0.3% to $2.371 a gallon.
- June natural gas NGM23 rose 1.1% to $2.401 per million British thermal units.
market driver
Crude declined on Tuesday after disappointing economic data from China. Demand concerns have plagued crude, with both WTI and Brent posting four straight weekly declines.
“Oil prices seem to be log-jammed between fundamentally oversold territory and a lack of sharp catalysts to shock prices in the near term,” Michael Tran, Commodity and Digital Intelligence Strategist at RBC Capital Markets, said in a note.
Real-time physical indicators remain mixed, at best, he said.
“The market had always expected a sluggish first quarter balance, but halfway through the second quarter and the physical market is not tracking meaningfully better,” he wrote. “Many market expectations are pinned on China’s reopening as the binary market moving event, but even that framework has been mixed … and peak turnarounds are more than a month away.”
The American Petroleum Institute reported US crude inventories rose by 3.7 million barrels last week, while gasoline stocks fell by 2.5 million barrels and distillates by 900,000 barrels, according to a source citing the data.
Official data from the Energy Information Administration was due on Wednesday morning. Analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal looked for crude inventories to show an average decline of 800,000 barrels.
Source: www.marketwatch.com
