The price of crude oil was ticking higher Wednesday morning as traders await cues from the official inventories data from the Energy Information Administration, due out later during the session.
Light Sweet Crude Oil (WTI) futures for September delivery, edged up $0.08 to $105.38 a barrel Yesterday, oil lost over 1 percent ahead of the weekly inventory report with investors tracking declining global equity markets after uncertainties over the U.S. Federal Reserve's plans for scaling down its quantitative easing program continued to unnerve markets.
Tuesday after the trading hours, the API said US crude oil inventories dipped 3.70 million barrels and gasoline stocks shed 971,000 barrels in the weekended August 02.
This morning the U.S. dollar slipped back near a 2-month low versus the euro, the Swiss franc and the yen, while lingering around a 2-week low against sterling.
In economic news from the euro zone, Germany's industrial production increased in June at a faster rate than expected by economists, latest data showed. Industrial production increased a seasonally adjusted 2.4 percent month-on-month in June, recovering from the previous month's revised 0.8 percent decrease, preliminary estimates from the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology showed. Economists had forecast output to rise 0.3 percent, following May's originally recorded 1 percent fall.
Switzerland's consumer prices remained unchanged in July from a year ago, after falling 0.1 percent in June, the Federal Statistical Office said. Economists had forecast prices to drop 0.1 percent.
Elsewhere, Bank of England issued an explicit guidance on the future conduct of monetary policy. The Monetary Policy Committee, led by Governor Mark Carney, "intends at a minimum to maintain the current highly stimulative stance of monetary policy until economic slack has been substantially reduced, provided this does not entail material risks to either price stability or financial stability", the central bank said in a statement.
Today during trading hours, the EIA will release its US crude oil inventories report for the weekended August 02. Analysts expect crude oil inventories to dip 2 million barrels and gasoline stocks to shed 1 million barrels last week.
