Crude oil prices started the week with sharp gains that switched to falls by the end of the week. One of the factors that may have contributed to the drop in crude oil prices was the disappointing US labor report. The daily changes in crude oil prices coincided with the changes in the US stock market including the S&P500. By the end of the week, Brent oil price slightly fell by 0.11% and WTI spot oil by 0.94%; as a result, the spread between Brent oil and WTI oil reached $26.51/b on Friday.
Let’s review the changes during last week (August 29th to September 2nd) of crude oil prices (Brent oil and WTI), and present a summary of the recent EIA petroleum report:
Crude oil prices – highlights
WTI spot oil price moderately declined during last week by 0.94%; on the other hand, its weekly average price rose by 3.55% as it reached $88.07 per barrel, compared with last week’s $85.06 per barrel. The average daily percent change of crude oil price (WTI) was 0.27%.
Brent spot oil price also declined by 0.11% during the week, but the average price rose by 2.92% compared with previous week’s average.
The difference between the Brent and WTI spot prices moderately inclined during the week and averaged at $26.23; it finished the week at $26.51.
Crude oil charts
The following chart shows last week’s trend of (week ending on August 26th) WTI spot oil price, NYMEX Futures Prices (September delivery) and Europe Brent spot oil price:
In the chart, Brent spot oil and WTI prices didn’t change much during the week, and had a moderate downward trend.
The second chart shows the daily percent changes (i.e. changes around the trend) of crude oil price (WTI spot oil, WTI future, Brent spot oil):
As seen above, Brent and WTI spot oil prices started the week with sharp gains and as the week progressed the daily percent changes fell and ended the week with declines.
Petroleum Stocks –highlights:
According to the recent EIA report of the US oil market, for the week ending on August 26th, U.S. Petroleum and oil stocks nearly didn’t change and decreased last week by 380 thousand barrels, or by 0.02%; the U.S. crude oil stocks reached 1,794.1 million barrels. On the other hand, the U.S. Ending Stocks of crude oil slightly rose by 555 thousand barrels to 1,058.8 million barrels.
The chart below shows the petroleum and oil stockpiles levels compared to the WTI crude oil prices during 2010 and 2011.
For the complete petroleum stocks review see here.
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