Oil futures continued their rise today after the Saudis announced an unexpected incremental production cut. The June production will now be about 60% of April production. Is this a reaction to weak demand? Or is it a proactive response to help calm an ailing market? Hard to say. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait also committed to cut production by another 180,000 bpd in total. Data showing China’s April factory prices fell at the sharpest rate in four years added to investor jitters today. U.S. oil demand is set to crash by about 2.2 MM\/bpd in 2020 to 18.29 MM\/bpd, the U.S. EIA said on Tuesday. Meanwhile, U.S. crude production is expected to fall by 540,000 bpd this year to 11.69 MM\/bpd the agency said, compared with its previous forecast for a decline of 470,000 bpd. The EIA said it expects U.S. motor gasoline consumption to fall to an average of 7 MM\/bpd in the second quarter from 8.6 million bpd in the first quarter, and gradually increase to 8.7 million bpd in the second half of the year. WTI traded up $1.64 or 6.79% to close at $25.78. Brent traded up $.35 or 1.81% to close at $29.98.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oil futures continued their rise today after the Saudis announced an unexpected\nincremental production cut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-petroleum-daily"],"yoast_head":"\n