Oil prices were subdued in Asia today as the market awaits a Fed decision on interest rates and stockpiles data from the United States. <\/p>\n
US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for October delivery was up 24 cents to $44.83 and Brent crude for November reversed earlier gains to dip four cents at $47.71 a barrel in late-morning trade. <\/p>\n
Traders’ attention is on a meeting Thursday of the US central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee to decide on the timing for an interest rate increase. <\/p>\n
Some analysts are expecting a rate hike to come this month while others are predicting it to happen in December. <\/p>\n
“Opinion is really mixed,” said Daniel Ang, an investment analyst with Phillip Futures in Singapore. <\/p>\n
“We’re seeing the market split on this. At the end of the day we will only know about the results later this week so there’s a lot of speculation at the moment.” <\/p>\n
Interest is keen in the oil market on a Fed decision because a raise in the benchmark federal funds rate from zero, where it has been pegged since 2008, could boost the greenback, making dollar-priced crude oil more expensive in other currencies and possibly weighing on demand and prices. <\/p>\n
Market watchers are also eyeing the weekly US crude inventories report to be released later Wednesday to gauge demand in the world’s top oil consuming nation. <\/p>\n
A poll of experts by Bloomberg News showed the consensus estimate is for a gain of 1.75 million barrels in the week to September 4. A build in the inventories reflect softer demand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices were subdued in Asia today as the market awaits a Fed decision on interest rates and stockpiles data from the United States. US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for October delivery was up 24 cents to $44.83 and Brent crude for November reversed earlier gains to dip four cents at $47.71 a barrel in late-morning trade. Traders’ attention is on a meeting Thursday of the US central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee to decide on the timing for an interest rate increase. Some analysts are expecting a rate hike to come this month while others are predicting it to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33366","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}