Author: David Cohen

It’s a dark Monday in the oil market,” said Bjornar Tonhaugen, head of oil markets at Rystad Energy. . .

What’s holding us back is the uncertainty about demand –– when we’re going to get a vaccine, when things are going to get back to normal, concerns about more shutdowns versus concerns about tightening supplies,

Oil increased slightly for the day remaining mostly flat coming off of yesterday’s big gasoline inventory build. Looking at gasoline, overall product supplied (a proxy for demand) was down 13% year over year.

Oil prices were lower today despite a larger than expected crude inventory draw. The report did outline struggling fuel demand as Gasoline and Distillate demand was down 287K/bpd and 587K/bpd respectively.

“If we get a deal, I think that would be supportive, and if we don’t get a deal, I think that’s going to be somewhat punishing for prices

Prices were mostly flat for the day as rising Libya production and increased Covid cases are offset by more stimulus hopes.

The reality is that we’re now seeing a pretty active spread of the pandemic across Europe and it’s spreading again in North America, and that potentially will weigh on oil demand recovery,

A significant amount of crude was drawn down in the gulf coast region, offset by increases in the Midwest.

Oil prices closed higher for the day after initially trading up earlier in the day on strong equities and weaker dollar.

We find that China’s record haul of crude growth is poised to cease as independent refineries have nearly fully utilized their state-issued import quotas and companies struggle with extremely high crude inventories. Therefore, despite the initial enthusiasm, we find that the uptick in oil prices today is unjustified.