The price of crude oil was moving lower Wednesday morning as traders await more clarity on the inventories situation from the EIA's weekly oil report, due out later during the session.
Light Sweet Crude Oil (WTI) futures for May delivery, slipped $0.47 to $96.72 a barrel. Yesterday, oil settled higher tracking rising global equity markets after some positive factory data out of the U.S. Investors also weighed some encouraging U.S. automobile sales data for March, with most car makers recording significant growth, fueling hopes of demand growth for oil. Nevertheless, the gains were limited with a slew of disappointing economic data from Europe.
Tuesday after the market hours, the API said US crude oil inventories jumped 4.70 million barrels, while gasoline stocks shed 5.00 million barrels in the weekended March 29.
This morning, the U.S. dollar was hovering around its four-month high versus the euro and lingering near its two-week low against sterling. The buck slipped back near a fresh one-month low versus the yen and trading flat against the Swiss franc.
In economic news, inflation in the euro area decelerated for the third consecutive month in March, but to a lesser extend than forecast by economists, as energy prices increased at a significantly slower pace, initial estimates showed. The harmonized index of consumer prices increased 1.7 percent year-on-year in March after growing 1.8 percent in February. Economists had forecast a quicker slowdown to 1.6 percent. The rate of growth weakened for the third month in a row.
Traders will look to the private sector employment report from the ADP, due out at at 8:15 am ET. Economists expect the report to show an addition of 205,000 jobs by the private sector following payroll gains of 198,000 in February.
A little later, the Institute for Supply Management is due to release the results of its non-manufacturing survey for March at 10 a.m. ET. The consensus expectations call for an unchanged reading of 56 for the month.
Today during trading hours, the EIA will release its U.S. crude oil inventories report for the weekended March 29. Analysts expect US crude oil inventories to add 2.1 million barrels last week
