Crude Oil Brent F Apr '19 (QAJ19)

by cmdtyNewswires - Tue Jul 23, 4:42PM CDT
Sep WTI crude oil (CLU19) on Tuesday closed up +0.55 (+0.98%) and Sep Brent crude oil (CBU19) closed up +0.57 (+0.90%). Sep RBOB gasoline (RBU19) closed up +0.0258 (+1.44%). Oil prices rallied on Tuesday on trade optimism after Bloomberg reported that the U.S. and China will resume face-to-face trade talks with U.S. Trade Representative Lighthizer and his team traveling to China early next week for meetings through Wednesday. Crude oil prices were also boosted by Tuesday's API report that U.S. crude oil inventories last week fell sharply by -10.96 million bbls. Another bullish factor was news on Monday that the U.S. sanctioned a Chinese state oil trading company for violating restrictions on buying Iranian oil, which may have the effect of slowing the spigot of under-the-counter Iranian oil sales. Oil prices early Tuesday traded lower due to weak U.S. economic data on home sales, home prices, and the Richmond Fed index. Also, the IMF on Tuesday reduced its world GDP forecasts by 0.1 point for 2019-20 to +3.2% in 2019 and +3.5% in 2020. The consensus for Wednesday's weekly EIA report is for a -3.9 million bbl drop in U.S. crude oil inventories, a -2.0 million bbl drop in gasoline inventories, and a +1.0 million bbl increase in distillate inventories. Last Wednesday's EIA data showed that U.S. crude oil inventories as of July 12 were +5.3% above the 5-year average, gasoline inventories were +1.4% above the 5-year average, and distillate inventories were -1.8% below the 5-year average. U.S. weekly oil production in the week ended July 12 fell by -2.4% w/w to 12.0 million bpd, which was mildly below May's record high of 12.4 million bpd.