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The Weekly Oil Futures Wrap at Live Oil Prices
Published on February 26, 2010 by oilprices · No CommentsThe Crude Oil market gyrated wildly this week with a high Sunday night of $80.78 and a low of $77.05. Prices closed for the week down 64 cents to $79.60 in quiet professional trading. The market looked strong in the beginning of the week as traders absorbed information about Total. Europe’s largest refiner, had reported “sporadic” shortages at some gasoline filling stations in France. The strike started Feb. 17 in an effort to secure jobs for workers at an idled plant near Dunkirk. Traders then focused on news about US consumer confidence which was released on Monday. The Conference Board, a private research group, said its index of consumer confidence declined to 46.0 this month, from a revised 56.5 in January, first reported as 55.9. The February reading was far below the 54.8 expected by economists surveyed.
On Wednesday the market needed to absorb inventory data from the Department of Energy. Expectations were for an increase of stockpiles of 1.9 million barrels in the week ended Feb. 19U.S. Expectations for Gasoline inventories were to have added 1 million barrels from 232.1 million, the highest level since March 2008. The actual release showed that U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) increased by 3.0 million barrels from the previous week. Crude inventories are above the average range and the trajectory does not look good for crude oil bulls. Total motor gasoline inventories decreased by 0.9 million barrels last week, and are above the upper limit of the average range. Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 0.6 million barrels, and are above the upper boundary of the average range for this time of year. Total products supplied (which is a measure of overall product demand) over the last four-week period has averaged 19.1 million barrels per day, up by 1.3 percent compared to the similar period last year. An interesting nugget was that although crude oil inventory increased above expectations, levels at Cushing (where
Next week the market will focus on a plethora of US economic data, which includes the Employment Report at the end of the week.