BLBG: Crude Oil Rebounds After Report Shows Increase in U.S. Refinery Operations
Crude oil futures rebounded after a U.S. government report showed that refineries operated at a higher-than-forecast rate.
Refinery utilization increased 3.1 percentage points to 86.3 percent of capacity, the Energy Department said today in a weekly report on inventories. That’s the highest rate since the week ended Jan. 7.
Supplies of crude oil rose 616,000 barrels to 370.9 million, the department said. Inventories were forecast to decrease by 1.5 million barrels, according to the median of 13 analyst estimates in a Bloomberg News survey.
Crude oil for July delivery rose 6 cents to $99.65 a barrel at 10:46 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Oil traded at $99.42 a barrel before the release of the report at 10:30 a.m. in Washington.
Oil also increased after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said yesterday that it’s turning “more bullish” on raw materials as demand improves. Goldman Sachs suggested buying crude, copper and zinc in a reversal of last month’s call to sell commodities.
“The market was pricing in a global growth story up until February, then it shifted into a supply-shock story and then within the last week or two it shifted back into a demand-driven story,” Jeffrey Currie, head of commodity research at Goldman Sachs in London, said in an interview. “This shift back to a demand-driven market, albeit weaker demand, is very significant. We are substantially more confident when the market is focused on demand growth.”
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development maintained its forecasts for the world economy to expand 4.2 percent this year and 4.6 percent in 2012, and raised its expectations for U.S. growth to 2.6 percent this year from 2.2 percent predicted in November.
“The global recovery is becoming self-sustaining and more broad-based,” OECD Chief Economist Pier Carlo Padoan said in the Paris-based organization’s annual economic outlook published today. The 30-member OECD represents developed countries.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Shenk in New York at mshenk1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net.
