Crude oil prices are still at a high level and continued to crawl up their price level. They have started off the week with falls that by the end of the week reversed direction as oil prices increased.
There might be different reasons for this increase in oil prices which might include the ongoing war in Libya, the protests in Syria and growing concerns of investors around the US and Europe’s economic condition (see here for the latest update on this news).
Here is a recap for the week ending on April 21st on crude oil prices (Brent oil and WTI), and a summary of the recent EIA petroleum report:
Crude oil prices – highlights
Europe Brent spot price rose by 2.1% from beginning to end, but its average price fell by 0.63% compared to previous week’s average.
Crude WTI oil spot price (weekly average) increased by 1.26% and reached 109.11$/b, compared to last week’s 107.75$/b. The average daily change of crude oil price (WTI) was 0.60%, and its price increased by 4.70% from beginning to end of the week.
NYMEX Futures Price (May delivery), much like WTI spot price, inclined by 4.83% during the week, and it reached on Friday 112.29$/b – its highest price level since April 8th.
The difference between the Brent and WTI spot prices reached on Friday 12.50$/b – the smallest gap since April 4th; the average premium fell (compared to the previous week) to 13.69$/b during the week with a standard deviation of 1.10$/b.
Crude oil charts
The following chart presets the trend of WTI spot price, NYMEX Futures Prices (May delivery) and Europe Brent spot price during last week:
It presents that WTI and Brent spot prices had a moderate upward trend for these prices during last week.
The second graph shows the daily percent changes (i.e. changes around the trend) of crude oil price (WTI spot, WTI future, Brent spot):
The graph shows the rise of Brent oil and WTI rising from a negative percent change to positive daily percent change.
Petroleum Stocks –highlights:
In this week’s recent review on EIA report, about petroleum stocks, consumption and production: U.S. Petroleum and oil stocks declined by 6.7 million barrels, which is a 0.38% drop compared to the previous week. For the week ending on April 15th the stocks reached 1,757.2 million barrels. This was the largest withdraw since February 18th, 2011.
The chart below presents the petroleum and oil stocks levels compared to the WTI crude oil prices in 2011.
The crude oil refinery inputs (4 week average) reached 14.206 (million b/d), a decrease of 0.4% compared to the previous week of 8/4/2011.
In total, last week there was a rise in US oil production, and a decline in petroleum stocks, imports and refineries inputs.
For the complete petroleum stocks review see here.
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For further reading (on this site):
Previous issues of weekly report:
- Oil prices remained unchanged – Weekly recap 11-15 April
- Oil prices finished the week rising – Weekly recap 4-8 April
- Oil prices moderately inclined – Weekly recap 28/3-1/4