By Barbara Kollmeyer and Michael Kitchen, MarketWatch
MADRID (MarketWatch) — Losses for crude-oil futures ramped up Friday, as a stronger U.S. dollar and supply concerns helped dampen appetite for the commodity.
As well, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries left its key oil and supply demand forecasts steady, but warned of headwinds to come that could change its outlook.
Benchmark U.S. crude-oil futures for June delivery CLM3 -0.94% tripled losses seen from Asia, down 68 cents, or 0.7%, to sell for $95.71 a barrel, extending the contract’s 23-cent retreat in Thursday’s floor trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Likewise, rival London-traded benchmark June Brent crude UK:LCOM3 -0.74% pulled 54 cents, or 0.5%, lower to $103.94 a barrel.
Mounting gains for the U.S. dollar were pushing the oil futures downward, as appreciation in the greenback tends to depress buying as it makes oil and other dollar-denominated commodities more expensive to holders of other currencies. The dollar busted through the psychologically important level of 100 yen USDJPY +1.03% on Thursday in the U.S. after upbeat weekly jobless claims. The dollar last traded at ÂĄ101.68.
Midday Friday in East Asia, the ICE dollar index DXY +0.36% had risen to 82.937 from its 82.687 level late Thursday in North America.
Supply and demand fundamentals were also in focus ahead of the Ahead of the bloc’s May 31 summit, OPEC said demand grew less than expected in the first quarter of the year, but left its overall forecast unchanged at a rise of 800,000 barrels a day. It remains of the opinion that consumption will increase in the second half of 2013.
But it struck a cautious tone: “While at the beginning of the year it looked as if further momentum was building up, the continued decline in the euro zone, the significant deceleration in the first quarter in some of the Asian economies and the recently acknowledged slow-down in Russia all have the potential to again push growth down slightly further,” OPEC said.
Ahead of the OPEC update, Dow Jones Newswires cited U.K.-based tanker tracker Oil Movements as saying Thursday that OPEC producers’ seaborne oil shipments were slated to rise by a little over 1% in the four weeks to May 25. The shipments were mainly from the Middle East and excluded exports from Angola and Ecuador, the report said.
In terms of the U.S. supply picture, Citi Futures analysts cited what they saw as a disconnect between current Nymex crude prices and oil inventory levels as reported by the Department of Energy.
“We remain concerned that nearby [Nymex crude] prices not too far from their $98.24-per-barrel high ... for the year to date set back in January are a bit inconsistent with DOE commercial crude stocks that are the highest since at least 1981,” they wrote late Thursday.
“We still see some chance for crude-oil inventories to rise somewhat further before seasonally higher refinery crude runs start working them down again,” they wrote, suggesting clients short U.S. crude if it reaches an entry point of $94.20.
In other energy-futures action, natural gas for June delivery NGM13 -1.03% gave up 3 cents, or 0.8%, to trade at $3.95 per million British thermal units, while June heating oil HOM3 -0.96% lost 2 cents, or 0.8%, to $2.91 a barrel.
June gasoline RBM3 -0.66% slipped a cent, representing a 0.5% loss, to sit at $2.87 a gallon after falling 1.1% in Thursday trade.
