BLBG:WTI Crude Trades Near One-Month High as Cushing Stockpiles Drop
West Texas Intermediate crude traded near the highest level in a month after stockpiles fell a second week at Cushing, Oklahoma. Iraq resumed exports via Turkey today after a halt caused by sabotage to a pipeline.
WTI fluctuated after climbing 1.1 percent yesterday. Inventories at Cushing, the delivery point for New York futures, slid 652,000 barrels to 49.1 million last week, data from the Energy Information Administration show. Refinery utilization rose to the highest since January. Iraq repaired its pipeline to Turkey after a bombing attack yesterday in the city of Mosul, state-run North Oil Co. said. The weekly U.S. jobless claims will be announced later today.
“We have seen a good rally over the last few days, and today the market looks to be taking stock, awaiting the next economic data,” said Michael Hewson, a market analyst at CMC Markets Plc in London who expects WTI to peak at $98 this year. “I think there will be sideways trading until U.S. trading, when there could be a pop when we get weekly jobless claims.”
WTI for June delivery was down 54 cents at $96.08 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange as of 10:20 a.m. London time. The volume of all contracts traded was 34 percent below the 100-day average. Futures advanced $1 to $96.62 yesterday, the highest close since April 2.
Brent for June settlement fell 54 cents to $103.80 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The front-month European benchmark was at a premium of $7.72 to WTI. That’s the same level as it closed at yesterday, which is the narrowest gap since January 2011.
U.S. Inventories
Total U.S. crude stockpiles rose by 230,000 barrels, according to the EIA, the Energy Department’s statistical arm. That compares with a projected gain of 2 million in a Bloomberg News survey. Refinery run rates climbed 2.6 percentage points, the most since September, to 87 percent.
Gasoline stockpiles declined by 910,000 barrels last week, said the EIA. They were forecast to slip by 475,000 barrels, according to the median estimate of 12 analysts in the Bloomberg survey. The U.S. Memorial Day holiday on May 27 marks the start of the nation’s peak driving period.
Distillate inventories, a category that includes heating oil and diesel, increased 1.8 million barrels, according to the EIA. They were predicted to advance by 500,000 barrels, the Bloomberg survey shows.
The 500-mile (805-kilometer) Seaway pipeline operated by Enterprise Products Partners LP (EPD) and Enbridge Inc. (ENB) won’t be able to carry its expected average of 335,000 barrels a day of crude in its first year of operation since it was expanded, according to a filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission yesterday. Daily throughput will average about 295,000 barrels through May, the filing shows.
Seaway, which transports crude from Cushing, the largest U.S. oil-storage hub, to refineries in the Houston area, is operating below capacity because of limited offtake capability at the end of the line, which won’t be repaired until next year. The pipeline’s capacity was increased to 400,000 barrels a day on Jan. 11.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ben Sharples in Melbourne at bsharples@bloomberg.net; Rupert Rowling in London at rrowling@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net
