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Reasons for the sliding oil price pile up

  • Crude oil prices collapsed, with Brent crude closing under USD40/bbl for the first time since June
  • risk-off tone across markets 
  • stronger USD headwinds
  • tone was set earlier this week after Saudi Aramco cut its prices to Asian refiners, suggesting demand is weak
  • Bloomberg survey showed that only four out of ten Asian refiners would be subsequently trying to buy more Saudi crude
  • Abu Dhabi National Oil Co also cut its prices on Tuesday
  • US refiners are also cutting output, as the summer driving season ends and inventories remain high
  • rising COVID-19 infections across the globe doesn’t bode well for demand in the short term
  • futures markets widening in the contango for both Brent and WTI to their widest levels since May

DOE crude oil inventories for July 10 week -7.493M vs -2.098 million estimate

DOE crude oil inventories for the week of July 10, 2020

  • crude oil inventories -7.493 million vs. -2.1 million estimate
  • gasoline inventories -3.147 million vs. -1.3 million estimate
  • distillates inventories -0.453 million vs. 1.5 million estimate
  • Cushing OK crude inventories 0.949 million vs. 2 point to 0 6 million last week
  • US refinery utilization 0.6% vs. 0.5% estimate
  • crude oil implied demand 17637 vs. 17586 last week
  • gasoline implied demand 9248.4 vs. 9290.0 last week
  • distillates implied demand 5023.7 vs. 4380.1 last week
The private API data released near the close of yesterday’s trade showed a bigger than expected drawdown of -8.322. Today’s crude oil inventory data was below the API data by about 900 K. Below are the private data results:
DOE crude oil inventories for the week of July 10, 2020
Crude oil is trading at $40.50 just prior to the report. The current price is trading at $40.64

OPEC and its partners will consider increasing oil output at a meeting this week

Saudi Arabia and most others in the OPEC+ alliance support increasing output by around 2 million barrels a day say reports ahead of this week’s meeting.

  • Key members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its Russia-led allies will hold a virtual meeting on Wednesday 15 July
There is no further detail on this, link here
The increased optimism comes as hopes are up that demand is beginning to recover and will continue to do so. Its not going to be smooth sailing though.
Saudi Arabia and most others in the OPEC+ alliance support increasing output by around 2 million barrels a day say reports ahead of this week's meeting.
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