By Myra P. Saefong and Michael Kitchen, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Oil futures pulled back Tuesday but held their ground near $106 a barrel with traders finding little reason to move prices much in either direction before this week’s data on U.S. inventories.
Crude oil for August delivery CLQ3 -0.25% slipped 42 cents, or 0.4%, to $105.90 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices saw a 37-cent advance on Monday.
Similarly, August Brent crude UK:LCOQ3 -0.08% shed 16 cents, or 0.2%, to $108.93 a barrel. The August Brent contract expires at the close of trading on ICE Futures.
“Crude-oil traders have been progressively losing focus on Egypt, judging by the reaction of prices to overnight news that seven people were killed and hundreds injured in Cairo as supporters of Morsi demanded his reinstatement,” said Fawad Razaqzada, technical analyst at GFT Markets in London.
“It seems like all the focus is on the demand side after U.S. crude inventories fell by some 20 million barrels in the space of just two weeks, which caught most people by surprise,” he said in emailed comments.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported much bigger-than-expected declines of roughly 10 million barrels each over the past two weeks. The latest EIA data will be released Wednesday, covering the week ended July 12.
A separate report from the American Petroleum Institute will be released later Tuesday.
Analysts polled by Platts forecast a fall of 2.5 million barrels in crude stockpiles. They expect gasoline inventories to be unchanged for the week and forecast an increase of 1.8 million barrels for distillates, which include heating oil.
Following data on U.S. inflation early Tuesday, oil prices added to gains in the first half-hour after the release, then turned lower.
The consumer price index rose by a seasonally adjusted 0.5% last month, while core consumer prices advanced 0.2%. Both figures were in line with expectations.
Industrial production, meanwhile, climbed 0.3% in June, stronger than the 0.1% rise expected in a MarketWatch-compiled economist poll.
In other energy-futures trading, August gasoline RBQ3 +0.42% gained 1.5 cents, or 0.5%, at $3.12 a gallon, while August heating oil HOQ3 +0.58% rose 1 cent, or 0.4%, to $3.04 a gallon.
Natural gas for August NGQ13 +0.93% was up 3 cents, or 0.8%, at $3.70 per million British thermal units after advancing by 3 cents on Monday.
Myra Saefong is a MarketWatch reporter based in San Francisco. Follow her on Twitter @MktwSaefong.
Michael Kitchen is Asia editor for MarketWatch and is based in Los Angeles. You can follow him on Twitter at @KitchenNews.
