Oil held steady as research indicated that existing Covid-19 vaccines are effective against the new virus variant, supporting the outlook for fuel consumption, while U.S. crude supplies saw a slight decrease.
Futures in New York held near $72 a barrel on Wednesday. Domestic crude inventories fell 241,000 barrels last week, government data showed -- far less than 3.1-million-barrel decrease the industry-funded American Petroleum Institute reported on Tuesday. Stockpiles rose by 2.3 million barrels at the nation’s biggest storage hub at Cushing, Oklahoma, the most since February.
“A number over two million is never good for energy market,” said Bob Yawger, director of the futures division at Mizuho Securities USA. Inventory declines at Cushing in October and early November helped propel oil to multi-year highs, and the reversal of that trend means the probability of futures reaching those levels again in the short term has “basically evaporated.”
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