The US Department of Energy report on the oil stockpiles has been just released. Last week’s print showed a major build of 7.03 million barrels. Luckily for oil bulls, this time crude stockpiles declined.
US oil stockpiles keep behaving in line with the 5-year average. Source: Bloomberg, XTB Research
An increase of 1.6 million barrels of crude oil was expected. However, actual reading not only diverge in terms of the figure but also of the direction. DOE report confirmed direction signalled by API estimates and showed a drop of 1.4 million barrels (API hinted at a drop of 3.1 mb). Declines were also spotted in case of distillates and gasoline but were smaller than markets expected.
DOE report details:
- Change in oil stockpiles: -1.4 mb, expected: +1.6 mb
- Change in gasoline stockpiles: -1.17 mb, expected: -1.72 mb
- Change in distillate stockpiles: -362k, expected: -1176k
While tone of the reading is clearly upbeat for the oil prices, no major price move occurred. WTI prices (OIL.WTI) keeps struggling within the key resistance zone ($64.00-64.70). A break above this zone could facilitate an upward move towards the $66.50 handle, the level that saw some price action throughout 2018. What makes this resilience even more strange is the fact that there are more factors that suggest an upward move, especially today’s Chinese data.
WTI (OIL.WTI) remains resilient to upbeat inventories data and fails to see any bigger price move. Commodity is struggling within the key resistance zone and may need a strong impulse to break above. Source: xStation5
