Oil loses early gains as U.S. data point to underwhelming summer demand
Investing.com — Oil bulls might need a new scapegoat if the market doesn’t perform to their expectations.
Oil prices settled lower on Wednesday after government data showed U.S. crude inventories fell by just a third of expected levels last week, even after the Biden administration halted weekly additions of oil from the national reserve to the market. Gasoline consumption underwhelmed as well for a mid-July week.
New York-based West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, crude reversed gains seen before the data to settle down 40 cents, or 0.5%, at $75.35 per barrel. The U.S. crude benchmark hit an intraday high of $76.87 earlier. Just a day ago, WTI rallied more than 2% on upbeat expectations over last week’s U.S. oil and fuel consumption.
London-based Brent also swung from a session high of $80.92 to settle down 17 cents, or 0.2%, at $79.46. Like WTI, Brent jumped 2% in the prior session as longs in the market bet heavily on strong demand numbers for U.S. oil and fuel last week.
Ed Moya, analyst at online trading platform OANDA, noted that crude prices have been choppy since Brent got above the $80 per barrel targeted by oil bulls, saying the market’s hold on its upward momentum “will naturally depend on a number of other factors including economic data and what producers are doing.”
The U.S. crude inventory balance fell by just 708,000 barrels for the week ended July 14 — versus expectations for a 2.44 million barrel draw, the Energy Information Administration, or EIA, reported.
In the prior week to July 7, crude stockpiles surged by almost 6.0M barrels, the most in a month.
The crude draw reported by the EIA did not come with its usual caveat — the release of crude from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. For months now,
Read more on investing.com
