Oil: a review of the market situation

Oil prices rose moderately, departing from the five-year minimum, which was due to speculation that the recent drop is excessive.

Recall oil fell by almost half since June under pressure from concerns about forecasts slow recovery in global demand and oversupply of stocks. Last Friday, the International Energy Agency cut its forecast for global oil demand next year by 230,000 barrels per day to 900,000 barrels after similar cuts by OPEC and the Office of information in the field of Energy.

On the dynamics of trade have also influenced today's data on oil reserves in the United States. The Department of Energy said that the oil reserves in the US stores this week 6-12 December fell by 847,000 barrels to 379.9 million barrels, while the average forecast assumes a decrease of 1.9 million barrels. Gasoline inventories rose by 5.3 million barrels to 222 million barrels, the highest since March 14. Analysts had expected gasoline inventories increase compared to the previous week total of 2 million barrels. Distillate stocks fell by 207,000 barrels to 121.5 million barrels, while analysts had expected an increase of 1 million barrels. Utilization rate of refining capacity fell by 1.9 percentage points to 93.5%. Analysts expected a decrease of 0.1 percentage points. It is worth emphasizing that yesterday's report of the American Petroleum Institute showed an unexpected increase in US oil inventories to 1900000 barrels last week.

Market participants also drew attention to US CPI data. As it became known, the seasonally-weighted index of prices to consumers fell by 0.3% in November and increased by 1.3% per annum. As expected, the main driver of the decline in consumer prices was the drop in oil prices, the price index for gasoline fell to the lowest since December 2008 value. Indices of fuel and natural gas also showed decline, and the index of energy decreased by 3.8%.

In the center of attention - the announcement of the Fed's decision on interest rates. The Fed could delete the phrase about saving rates near zero "for an extended period of time," that would be a step toward raising rates in the middle of next year.

Cost of January futures for US light crude oil WTI (Light Sweet Crude Oil) rose to 56.48 dollars per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

January futures price for North Sea petroleum mix of Brent increased by $ 1.09 to $ 60.88 a barrel on the London Stock Exchange ICE Futures Europe.