The September Brent futures flat price contract rallied to $85.70/bbl at 09:15 BST, following which it met resistance and softened to $85.25/bbl at 11:10 BST (time of writing). Last Friday, the EIA reported that US oil production climbed by over 72kb/d m/m to a four-month high of 13.25mb/d in April. Product supplied of crude oil and petroleum products, a proxy for demand, increased by 131kb/d m/m to 20mb/d in April. Demand rose by nearly 0.5mb/d relative to the EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) for major products, such as gasoline, distillate and jet fuel. In addition, the US National Hurricane Center announced over the weekend that the Category 4 storm Hurricane Beryl is reported to be moving across the Atlantic Ocean towards the Carribean’s Windward Islands. Furthermore, a Bloomberg survey of seven traders and refiners has shown that Saudi Aramco may reduce the official selling price (OSP) of Arab Light crude to Asia by 90c/bbl m/m in August. In addition, the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) has reported the set up of a new entity grouping national oil producers and other state firms to search for ultra-deep oil and gas reserves in an attempt to look for harder-to-extract resources. Finally, at the time of writing, the front-month and 6-month Brent futures spreads stood at $0.75/bbl and $3.55/bbl, respectively.
