MW:Oil futures pare gains ahead of key supply data
By Barbara Kollmeyer and Virginia Harrison, MarketWatch
MADRID (MarketWatch) — Crude-oil futures moved higher in European trading hours on Wednesday, but were paring gains ahead of a key weekly report on U.S. oil supplies.
July futures for light, sweet crude CLN2 +0.10% rose 16 cents, or 0.2%, to $83.48 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange during Asian trading hours.
The market is awaiting closely watched weekly U.S. supply data from the Energy Information Administration due out Wednesday.
Ahead of that, the International Energy Agency said global oil supply rose slightly in May. The report said Wednesday that a “springtime slump in oil markets accelerated in May in the wake of the deepening euro-zone crisis, mounting concern over a slowdown in Chinese growth and rising global oil supplies.” IEA says May global oil supplies rise
Late Tuesday the American Petroleum Institute reported a surprise 1.6 million rise in crude-oil supplies for the week ended June 8.
Analysts polled by Platts expect a 2 million-barrel decline in crude supplies for the week ended June 8. They also forecast an increase of 1 million barrels each for inventories of gasoline and distillates.
Investors are also awaiting a meeting of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) ministers in Vienna on Thursday. OPEC members are gathering for their official meeting on production quotas.
On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Ali Naimi said his country wouldn’t ask for OPEC to increase its production levels at this week’s meeting.
Barbara Kollmeyer is an editor for MarketWatch in Madrid.
