Crude prices extended their losses into a sixth day on Thursday, hovering near 3-month lows, hurt by growing fears over slower fuel demand amid a spike in COVID-19 cases worldwide while an unexpected rise in U.S. gasoline inventories added to pressure.<\/p>\n
Brent crude was down 85 cents or 1.3% at $67.38 a barrel by 0019 GMT, having fallen 1.2% on Wednesday. U.S. West Intermediate crude (WTI) lost 93 cents or 1.4% to $64.53 a barrel after tumbling 1.7% in the previous session.<\/p>\n
Both benchmarks have lost more than 5% over the past six sessions, trading near their lowest level since May 24 in the previous session.<\/p>\n
The slide continued as investors remained worried over the increase in infections caused by the Delta variant of the coronavirus worldwide.<\/p>\n
“Crude prices continue to look vulnerable around those mid to late summer support levels – $65 in WTI and $67 in Brent,” Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at OANDA Europe, said in a note.<\/p>\n
Slower growth in China as it imposes further restrictions in response to rising COVID-19 cases and some weakness in a few U.S. data points this past week has driven the softness in oil prices, he cited.<\/p>\n
“A move below $65 in WTI, for example, could see prices drop back into Q2 trading ranges between $57 and $65. This would be quite a drop from the levels we’ve seen the last couple of months and surely reflect growing concerns about the spread of delta and the implications for fourth quarter growth,” he added.<\/p>\n
The surprise build in U.S. gasoline inventories also fuelled concerns over slowing demand.<\/p>\n
U.S. crude inventories fell 3.2 million barrels last week to 435.5 million barrels, their lowest since January 2020, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
But gasoline stocks rose by 696,000 barrels to 228.2 million barrels, against analysts’ expectations for a 1.7 million-barrel drop.<\/p>\n
Minutes of the U.S. Federal reserve’s July 27-28 policy meeting showed officials noted the spread of the Delta variant could temporarily delay the full reopening of the economy, and restrain the jobs market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Crude prices extended their losses into a sixth day on Thursday, hovering near 3-month lows, hurt by growing fears over slower fuel demand amid a spike in COVID-19 cases worldwide while an unexpected rise in U.S. gasoline inventories added to pressure. Brent crude was down 85 cents or 1.3% at $67.38 a barrel by 0019 GMT, having fallen 1.2% on Wednesday. U.S. West Intermediate crude (WTI) lost 93 cents or 1.4% to $64.53 a barrel after tumbling 1.7% in the previous session. Both benchmarks have lost more than 5% over the past six sessions, trading near their lowest level since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"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-431444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431444","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\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}