Oil futures rose Thursday, attempting a bounce after a five-day slide that sent the U.S. benchmark back below the $70-a-barrel threshold in the previous session, as crude ended at its lowest since late June.
Price action
-
West Texas Intermediate crude for January delivery
CL00,
+1.24% CL.1,
+1.24% CLF24,
+1.24%
rose 41 cents, or 0.6%, to $69.79 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. -
February Brent crude
BRN00,
+1.27% BRNG24,
+1.27% ,
the global benchmark, was up 52 cents, or 0.7%, at $74.82 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.
Market drivers
Oil has fallen sharply following a Nov. 30 OPEC+ meeting that underwhelmed traders with a round of additional voluntary cuts for the first quarter of next year. The voluntary nature of the overall cuts left traders to question likely compliance with the measures.
“Momentum traders and falling volumes worsened crude’s recent plunge while OPEC’s latest announcement of output cuts and Saudi’s additional threats that they will extend their solo cut beyond Q1 went totally unheard,” Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank, said in a note.
“Worse, as the bears saw that investors ignored the supply cuts and threats, they feel more confident to increase their bets against crude,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, worries over demand have continued to plague the market.
Crude imports by China saw a monthly fall of 10% in November to a four-month low of 10.37 million barrels a day, reported S&P Global Commodity Insights, citing Thursday data from the General Administration of Customs.
Crude slumped Wednesday after the Energy Information Administration said gasoline inventories rose 5.4 million barrels last week, while distillate stocks rose 1.3 million barrels. Analysts surveyed by S&P Global Commodity Insights had looked for a rise of 800,000 barrels for each.
Rising product inventories offset a larger-than-expected drop in U.S. crude inventories of 4.6 million barrels. Analysts had looked for a 4.1 million barrel drop.
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