Oil: an overview of the market situation

Oil prices fell, dropping below $ 106 per barrel, helped by a report published by the Ministry of Energy. It became known that crude oil inventories rose last week, thus, reaching its highest level in more than two decades.

The data showed that crude oil inventories in the U.S. rose by 0, 25 million barrels, amounting in this case 388.874 million barrels, while gasoline stocks rose by 1.699 million barrels to 222.363 million. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy said that distillate stocks in the U.S. fell by 0.169 million barrels to 112.817 million. We also learned that the oil terminal in Cushing last week rose by 0.889 million barrels to 50.07 million barrels and refinery utilization in the United States amounted to 86.8% against 86.3% a week earlier.

Meanwhile, today it was reported that OPEC cut its outlook for growth in oil demand in 2013 to 40,000 barrels a day, remarking that the revision of the forecast for demand associated with fears over Cyprus. In addition, the data showed that in March, oil cartel decreased by 0.1 million barrels per day to 30.19 million barrels a day because of Nigeria.

In addition, we note that the impact on the dynamics of trade data, which were presented today General Administration of Customs of China. According to the report, in March trade deficit of 884 million, while according to the average forecast of economists was to be recorded a surplus of $ 15.15 billion Recall that in February, the trade surplus was $ 15.23 billion in addition, the data showed that exports in March rose by 10 per cent per annum, which was significantly less than forecast at 11.7 percent increase. We also recall that in February, exports increased by 21.8 percent. On the other hand, the volume of imports rose last month to 14.1 percent per annum, ahead of forecast growth of 6 percent and offsetting most of the decline from the previous month, which was 15.2 percent.

May futures on U.S. light crude oil WTI (Light Sweet Crude Oil) dropped to 93.86 dollars per barrel.

May futures price for North Sea Brent crude oil mixture fell to $ 105.62 a barrel on the London exchange ICE Futures Europe.