Crude rises as US stocks confound expectations

18 July 2007 16:10  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICIS news)--The crude oil markets rose by about 75 cents on Wednesday when this week’s US stock figures showed a slightly larger than expected crude draw and also draws on both gasoline and distillates, rather than the anticipated small builds.

August NYMEX crude rose from around $74.30 before the figures were published to hit a high of $75.05/bbl, a gain of $1.03 from Tuesday’s close.

However, it then lost a little ground, and at 14:45 GMT was trading around $74.80, up 78 cents from Tuesday’s close of $74.02.

On ICE Futures, September Brent also gained ground, rising from around $75.70 before the figures were published to hit a high of $76.48. At 14:45 GMT, September Brent was trading around $76.25, up 72 cents from Tuesday’s close of $75.53.

Analysts’ predictions for this week’s US stock figures were that they would show a draw on crude stocks of about 200,000 bbl, but builds on distillates of around 900,000 bbl and on gasoline of around 900,000 bbl.

US Stocks (million bbl)	w/e 13 July 2007
	DOE	Change	API	Change
Crude	352.1	-0.5	341.8	-3.7
Gasoline	203.3	-2.3	205.0	+1.0
RFG	2.5	+0.1	2.2	-0.4
Distillate	122.2	-0.2	125.0	+0.3
Heating oil	31.6	-0.7	33.00	n/c
Kerosene	40.9	n/c	40.9	n/c

Sources: Department of Energy; American Petroleum Institute

By: Tony Dillon
+44 20 8652 3214

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