Crude Oil Prices – Weekly Recap 7-11 May 2012

Crude oil prices continued their descent and declined again during last. The news from OPEC of the steady rate of OPEC’s oil production and the rise in OECD oil inventories is plausibly a sign that crude oil prices, from the standpoint of the fundamentals, may continue to fall. By Friday it was reported that the U.S PPI declined by 0.2% in April. This news along with the news of the disappointing industrial production rates in China and India during April was plausibly among the factors to pull down crude oil prices.

The oil stockpiles slightly increased during the previous week by 1.5M bl.  

By the end of last week, WTI oil declined by 2.4% and Brent decreased by nearly 1%; as a result, the difference between Brent and WTI reached $15.92/b on Friday. 

Here is a short recap for the shifts in oil market (Brent and WTI) between May 7th and May 11th and a summary of the recent EIA petroleum and oil stockpiles report:

Oil Market – Weekly Summary

table oil prices - 7-11 May 2012WTI oil price (spot) declined again during last week by 2.4%; its weekly average price also fell by 6.25% to $96.99 per barrel, compared with last week’s $103.46 per barrel. The average daily percent change of oil price (WTI) was -0.48%.

NYMEX Oil Future (June delivery) also fell by 2.4% during the week, and reached $96.13/b by Friday, May 11th.

Europe Brent oil also declined during the week by 0.98% and the average price also tumbled down by 4.04% compared with previous week’s average.

The difference between Brent and WTI spot slightly rose during the week as it ranged between $14 and $16; its average premium reached $15.55; it finished the week at $15.92.

Oil Charts

In the following charts (for the week ending on May 11th) are the daily developments in WTI spot oil, NYMEX Future (June delivery) and Brent oil:

The first chart presents the shifts of WTI and Brent oil during last week: both oil rates have had a downward trend during most of the week.

oil WTI BRENT chart - 7-11 May 2012The second chart shows the developments of the daily percent changes (i.e. shifts around the trend) of oil prices (WTI spot oil, WTI future, Brent spot):

 

oil chart WTI Brent - percent change 7-11 May 2012Oil Stockpiles –Review:

According to the latest EIA report on the U.S Petroleum and oil market, for the week ending on May 4th, U.S. Petroleum stockpiles rose by 1.5 million bl and reached 1,767.05 million barrels.

The complete oil stockpiles review from May 9th.

For further reading: