Oil futures remained rangebound Thursday, making modest strikes in both path, a day after information confirmed U.S. crude inventories surged by 16 million barrels.
Price motion
-
West Texas Intermediate crude for March supply
CL00,
+0.01% CL.1,
+0.01% CLH23,
+0.01%
rose 10 cents, or 0.1%, to $78.69 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices traded between a low of $78.05 and a excessive of $79.54. -
April Brent crude
BRN00,
+0.01% BRNJ23,
+0.01% ,
the worldwide benchmark, ticked up 2 cents, or lower than 0.1%, to $85.40 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. -
Back on Nymex, March gasoline
RBH23,
-1.98%
fell 1.7% to $2.4465 a gallon, whereas March heating oil
HOH23,
-0.96%
ticked down 0.3% to $2.8368 a gallon. -
March pure fuel
NGH23,
-1.25%
rose 0.6% to $2.486 per million British thermal models.
Market drivers
Oil ended with losses Wednesday after the Energy Information Administration reported that U.S. industrial crude inventories rose by 16.3 million barrels for the week ended Feb. 10. That marked an eighth consecutive week of provide good points reported by the EIA.
See: What are these EIA ‘adjustments’ within the weekly U.S. oil provide information tables all about?
The EIA information to date this yr has been “consistently bearish and pointed to sluggish consumer demand, hesitant refining activity, sizeable builds in oil stockpiles and incrementally rising domestic oil production,” analysts at Sevens Report Research wrote in Thursday’s e-newsletter. These are “all bearish factors for the oil futures market.”
Still, Russia’s 500,000 barrel per day oil manufacturing minimize starting in March and ongoing optimism about recovering demand out of China “remain supportive of prices, leaving oil futures largely rangebound between support in the low
$70s and resistance in the low $80s,” they stated.
The “primary risk to oil prices remains to the downside as recession warnings from the Treasury market point to a potential collapse in consumer demand in the coming months or quarters,” the analysts stated.
Crude has traded largely sideways since late 2022 in a spread between the low $70s and low $80s for WTI. A rebound by the U.S. greenback is seen as a weight on crude, with the ICE U.S. Dollar Index
DXY,
a measure of the forex in opposition to a basket of six main rivals, up 1.9% to date in February. A stronger greenback generally is a weight on commodities priced within the unit, making them costlier to customers of different currencies.
Meanwhile, natural-gas futures traded modestly larger after the EIA reported on Thursday that home natural-gas provides fell by 100 billion cubic toes for the week ended Feb. 10.
That in contrast with a mean analyst forecast for a decline of 109 billion cubic toes, in line with a survey performed by S&P Global Commodity Insights.
Source web site: www.marketwatch.com
