Crude falls by about 70 cents on US stock builds

01 April 2009 16:01  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICIS news)--The crude oil markets fell by about 70 cents on Wednesday, halting a gradual recovery, when this week’s US stock figures showed unexpected builds on products, as well as a slightly larger-than-anticipated build on crude.

Before the figures from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) were published, May NYMEX light sweet crude futures fell from around $48.15/bbl to around $47.45/bbl, which was a loss of $2.21 from Tuesday’s close. This was above the low of $47.35/bbl posted earlier in the day.

At 14:40 GMT, May NYMEX crude then regained some ground and was trading around $48.20/bbl, down $1.46 from Tuesday’s close of $49.66/bbl.

On ICE futures, May Brent also lost ground, falling from around $48.10/bbl before the figures were published to around $47.50/bbl.

At 14:40 GMT, May Brent was trading around $48.10/bbl, down $1.13 from Tuesday’s close of $49.23/bbl.

Analysts’ predictions for this week’s US stock figures were that they would show a build on crude stocks of about 2.5m bbl, but draws on distillate of around 800,000 bbl and on gasoline of around 1.4m bbl.

The API figures were published late on Tuesday.

US stocks (million bbl)	w/e 27.03.09
	EIA	Change	API	Change
Crude	359.4	+2.8	357.8	+3.3
Gasoline	216.8	+2.2	215.5	-0.5
RFG	1.3	+0.3	2.1	+0.4
Distillate	144.2	+0.3	144.5	+1.8
Heating Oil	38.1	+0.3	37.5	-0.9
Jet Kerosene	39.5	+0.2	39.8	n/c

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By: Tony Dillon
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