Oil prices declined on Thursday on lingering concerns that slowing global economic growth may limit fuel demand and after a surprise build in U.S. crude inventories.<\/p>\n
International Brent crude oil futures were at $60.85 a barrel at 0627 GMT, down 29 cents, or 0.5 percent, from their last settlement.<\/p>\n
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $52.37 per barrel, 25 cents lower from their last close.<\/p>\n
“The crude market is now focussing on global growth concerns primarily … It looks to be viewing inventory readings (as) secondary,” said Hue Frame, portfolio manager at Frame Funds in Sydney.<\/p>\n
“The IMF downgrading 2019\/20 and the continued rhetoric from Davos reiterating that they expect global growth to slow down over the next two years is providing selling pressure in oil,” Frame said.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its world economic growth forecasts for 2019 and 2020, due to weakness in Europe and some emerging markets.<\/p>\n
World leaders and top executives are meanwhile meeting in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss how to steer policy amid worries of slowing economic growth, damaging trade wars and Brexit.<\/p>\n
Oil market sentiment was also weakened by a surprise increase in U.S. crude inventories after refineries cut output, data from industry group the American Petroleum Institute showed on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Crude inventories rose by 6.6 million barrels in the week ended on Jan. 18 to 443.6 million barrels, compared with analyst expectations for a decrease of 42,000 barrels, the API said. Refinery runs fell by 152,000 barrels per day. <\/p>\n
The United States has overtaken Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s biggest crude producer with production levels approaching 12 million barrels per day (bpd).<\/p>\n
But U.S. oil producers told the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on Wednesday that investors in U.S. oil companies wanted a reduction in growth and higher payouts.<\/p>\n
The bosses of U.S. companies Occidental Petroleum and Hess Corp, attending a session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, said growth in U.S. shale oil output would slow.<\/p>\n
OPEC and its non-OPEC allies including Russia have cut output since 2017 to support oil prices.<\/p>\n
“Sharp production cuts by OPEC+ have kept crude oil futures supported, however, as market reports indicate for a marked output reduction in Dec 2018,” said Benjamin Lu, analyst at Phillip Futures.<\/p>\n
“Though oil prices have demonstrated for higher upside potential in the first quarter of 2019, mounting economic challenges will continue to impede exponential gains in the longer term,” Lu said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices declined on Thursday on lingering concerns that slowing global economic growth may limit fuel demand and after a surprise build in U.S. crude inventories. International Brent crude oil futures were at $60.85 a barrel at 0627 GMT, down 29 cents, or 0.5 percent, from their last settlement. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $52.37 per barrel, 25 cents lower from their last close. “The crude market is now focussing on global growth concerns primarily … It looks to be viewing inventory readings (as) secondary,” said Hue Frame, portfolio manager at Frame Funds in Sydney. “The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-power"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}