The October Brent futures contract remained rangebound this afternoon, falling from $80.35/bbl at 14:00 BST to below $80/bbl at 15:45 BST to finally rise to $80.60/bbl at 17:30 BST (time of writing). EIA data for the week ending 26 July reported a decline in US crude oil inventories. Crude stocks saw a draw of 3.436mb against median estimates of a 1.1mb draw. Inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, witnessed a 1.106mb draw, although crude production remained unchanged. Interestingly, refinery utilisation declined by 1.5% to 90.1% against an estimated rise of 0.8%, highlighting lower demand for US crude in domestic refineries. Crude oil exports from the US increased by 733kb/d to 4.919mb/d. In macroeconomic news, Eurozone inflation unexpectedly rose to 2.6% in July (prev: 2.5%), although services price growth softened to 4.0% (prev: 4.1%). Finally, at the time of writing, the Oct/Nov and Oct/Apr’25 Brent futures spreads stood at $0.55/bbl and $2.45/bbl, respectively.
