WTI Holds Above $41 After Large Crude & Product Inventory Draws

Oil prices rallied today on the back of a weaker dollar and somewhat optimistic report from IEA, which decided to leave its 2020 forecast for oil demand unchanged at 91.7 million barrels per day while painting a picture of contracting supply, penciling in a 4-million-barrel-a-day drop in the fourth quarter.

But there is a lot of noise in the data still…

“Inventories are famously all over the board as a hurricane comes in,” said Flynn, in a note. Hurricane Delta made landfall on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast last week. The supply numbers “will be skewed enough and will cause more confusion than really shed any light.”

But the algos will get triggered one way of the other…

API

• Crude -5.422mm (-2.3mm exp)

• Cushing +2.199mm

• Gasoline -1.513mm (-1.8mm exp)

• Distillates -3.93mm (-2.5mm exp)

After last week’s surprise crude build, analysts continue to expect another draw and got a really big one (-5.42mm vs 2.3mm exp). Products also showed notable draws…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI hovered around $41 ahead of the print and held those gains after the bigf draws…

Going forward, OPEC+ members “will likely adopt a wait-and-see approach and not pursue new policies, since the market seems to be in balance and they will be cautious not to mess with the fragile recovery recently achieved,” said Manish Raj, chief financial officer at Velandera Energy.

“OPEC+ has shown its willingness to step in to rebalance the market, should that be necessary, but they will not risk prematurely tilting the balance in either direction,” he told MarketWatch.