WTI oil settles at three-month low as Brent climbs
Published on Fri, 17 Jul 2015 43 times viewed
Market Watch reported that futures prices for West Texas Intermediate oil settled at their lowest level in about 3 months Thursday, dogged by worries over a fresh crude-oil glut.
August West Texas Intermediate crude fell 50 cents, or 1%, to settle at USD 50.91 a barrel on Nymex, the lowest settlement for a most-active contract since April 9th. On Wednesday, prices slid 3.1%.
But Brent crude’s August contract, supported reports of an oil-field outage and contract expirations, ended higher.
August Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange, however, rose 46 cents, or 0.8%, to end at USD 57.51 a barrel on the contract’s expiration day. But September Brent the new front-month contract, settled at USD 56.92, down 20 cents after earlier gains.
Brent prices had climbed after news reports said a power outage shut the United Kingdom’s largest oil field. But a spokeswoman for Nexen, which operates the Buzzard oil field, said that the company does not publish production or maintenance operations information on an individual asset basis. The field, located in the North Sea, is the UK’s highest-producing field.
WTI oil failed to rally Wednesday despite a hefty decline in weekly US crude supplies and data provider Genscape Thursday reportedly said inventories at the futures delivery point of Cushing, Oklahoma, have climbed almost one million barrels since Friday.
Mr Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group, said that “Part of the reason for WTI’s failure to rally Wednesday was Federal Reserve Chairwoman Ms Janet Yellen, who seemed very upbeat and very confident that the Fed will raise rates this year.” Ms Yellen offered her twice-yearly testimony before Congress on Wednesday.
Higher interest rates tend to support the US dollar and a stronger greenback can weigh on dollar-denominated oil.
Mr Flynn said in a note that “Oil can’t fight the Fed and it can’t fight the perception that the market is massively oversupplied, a situation that they say can only get worse when Iranian oil comes back on line and the fact that the summer-driving season is past its peak.”
Market participants were still assessing the details of the Iranian nuclear accord and its impact on oil markets. The general consensus is it will take several months for any significant volumes of additional Iranian oil to hit the market.
Oil prices appeared to find some support after eurozone finance ministers agreed to Greece’s request for a three-year bailout. That helped ease worries about risks to energy demand from Europe.
Elsewhere in the energy complex, August gasoline rose 3.8 cents, or 2%, to USD 1.897 a gallon, staging a partial rebound after plunging 3.7% a day earlier. August heating oil fell less than half a cent to USD 1.666 a gallon.
Source : Market Watch