The Sep Brent futures contract initially weakened into the afternoon, falling to $84.30/bbl at 14:30 BST before rallying to $85.50/bbl by 17:05 BST. This flip emerged alongside the release of EIA stats for the week ending 05 July at 15:30 BST today. The EIA announced a 3.443mb draw in US crude oil inventories against median estimates of a 1mb build. In addition, Cushing inventories saw a 700kb draw and gasoline stocks in the country witnessed a 2mb draw. However, distillate fuel oil saw a higher-than-expected build of 4.884mb. Finally, refinery utilisation increased by 1.9% this week (versus an anticipated decline) to 95.4%, highlighting a rise in demand for crude. In other news, OPEC released its monthly oil report for July 2024 today, in which the group stuck to its forecast for relatively strong growth in oil demand in 2024 and 2025. The forecast states that world oil demand would rise by 2.25mb in 2024 and 1.85mb in 2025, citing resilient economic growth and supportive air travel. By contrast, as per their annual Energy Outlook report, BP anticipates that oil demand will peak at around 102mb/d in 2025 and decline after that, albeit at different paces as per its “Current Trajectory” and “Net Zero” scenarios. Finally, at the time of writing, the front-month and six-month Brent futures spreads stood at $0.88/bbl and $3.85/bbl, respectively.
