Thomson Reuters Markets
Oil prices inched up on Wednesday morning, supported by expectations of a fall in U.S crude inventories and the ongoing outage of North Sea Forties pipeline. Although the 110,000 bpd crude unit at the Grangemouth refinery is expected to restart on Wednesday. Brent <LCOc1> was trading at $63.80/bbl as of 9:00 AM UKT, unchanged from the previous settle. Meanwhile, WTI <CLc1> had increased by 0.40% from the previous settle, standing at $57.69/bbl at the same time.
According to the US Weekly Crude Inventory report published by Thomson Reuters Oil Research, US crude stocks are estimated to have sharply decreased by 5.2 million bbl to 438.7 million bbl in the week ending December 15th. Crude imports into the US are assessed at 7.1 million bpd, falling by 138,000 bpd last week. Crude stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub rose by 70,000 bbl.
In addition, US weekly crude production is expected to have remained unchanged, standing at 9. 78 million bpd. Daily refinery input is expected to have declined w-o-w to 16.9 million bpd.
The Oil Research Team
Supply Chain & Commodities Research
