| At 10:16 am Singapore time (0216 GMT), the ICE March Brent futures contract was down 87 cents/b (1.08%) from the previous close at $79.93/b, snapping three days of gains that took it momentarily above the key $80/b handle.
US DoE Crude Oil Inventories (W/W) 31-Dec: -2144K (est -3650K; prev -3576K) – Distillate: +4418K (est -1000K; prev -1726K) – Cushing: +2577K (prev +1055K) – Gasoline: +10128K (est 1750K; prev -1459K) – Refinery Utilization: 0.10% (est 0.40%; prev 0.10%)
Oil prices were ripe for some profit-taking after a three-day bull run that added close to 4% in value to both crude oil benchmarks. Sentiment in oil markets were also dented by data from the US Energy Information Administration showing large builds in refined product inventories. US gasoline inventories surged 10.13 million barrels to 232.79 million barrels in the week ended Dec. 31 as implied demand fell to a 10-month-low of 8.17 million b/d, the EIA said, in a sign of the impact the coronavirus surge was having on oil demand. Nationwide distillate stocks jumped 4.42 million barrels to 126.85 million barrels, the EIA said, while crude oil stocks fell by 2.14 million barrels to 417.85 million barrels, a 15-week low. (S&P Global Platts)
COVID-19 caseloads in the US have continued to surge due to the highly infectious omicron strain of the coronavirus. Daily infections reached a staggering 956,893 cases on Jan. 3, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showed. Deaths were also beginning to climb while hospitalizations were reaching record highs in some US states due to the sheer scale of infected cases, CDC data and media reports showed. (S&P Global Platts)
A faster increase in global oil demand than growth in supply led to oil prices jumping last year, with the average Brent Crude price at $71 per barrel—the highest of the past three years, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Tuesday. Rising vaccination rates, reopening economies, and the lifting of mass lockdowns resulted in oil demand outpacing supply last year, pushing oil prices from as low as $50 a barrel at the start of 2021 to an annual high of $86 at the end of October, the EIA notes. (Oilprice.com)
OIL MAKRET ROUND-UP: (Bloomberg) |
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