Crude oil prices, much like other commodities prices, made a comeback, mainly during the first half of the week. There are several factors to consider the recent upward trend of crude oil prices including the weakening of the US dollar, the shift in recommendations of major investment banks and the concerns over the upcoming OPEC meeting (see here for further analysis).
Let review the changes from last week (May 23rd to May 27th) in regards to crude oil prices (Brent oil and WTI), and a summary of the recent EIA petroleum report:
Crude oil prices – highlights
WTI spot oil price continued to rise during the week by 3.64%; its weekly average price also increased by 1.58% and reached 99.55$/b, compared to last week’s 97.99$/b. The average daily percent change of crude oil price (WTI) was 0.30%.
NYMEX Futures Price (June delivery) also inclined by 4.59% during the week, and reached 100.59$/b on Friday.
Europe Brent spot oil price inclined by 4.59% from beginning to end, and its average price increased by 1.45% compared to previous week’s average.
The difference between the Brent and WTI spot prices continues to moderately incline during the week as well and reached on Friday 14.60$/b, and the average premium rose (compared to the previous week) to 14.10$/b with a standard deviation of 0.82$/b – nearly half the std deviation of last week’s premium.
Crude oil charts
The following chart presents last week’s trend of WTI spot oil price, NYMEX Futures Prices (June delivery) and Europe Brent spot oil price:
According to the chart above, there was an upward trend for WTI and Brent spot oil prices especially at the first half of the week, afterwards these prices didn’t change much.
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):
It shows that Brent and WTI spot oil started off the week very low and then picked up on Tuesday and Wednesday only the finished the week with very moderate changes.
Petroleum Stocks –highlights:
In last week’s EIA report about petroleum stocks, consumption and production, U.S. Petroleum and oil stocks moderately inclined by 6.7 million barrels, which is a 0.38% rise. For the week ending on May 20th the oil stocks reached 1,780.7 million barrels.
The final chart below presents the petroleum and oil stocks levels compared to the WTI crude oil prices during 2010-2011.
In total, during last week there were declines in oil imports and rises in refineries inputs, U.S. production and petroleum stocks.
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 moderately declined last week – Weekly recap 9-13 May
- Oil prices moderately declined last week – Weekly recap 9-13 May
- Oil prices fell sharply last week – Weekly recap 2-6 May