The Price of Oil Drops
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, the price of West Texas Intermediate crude for March delivery (CL CL00 CLH23) fell by $1.48, or 1.9%, to reach $76.99 a barrel.
Worldwide Benchmark
Similar to this, April Brent crude (BRN00 BRNJ23), the industry standard, fell $1.45 or 1.7%, closing at $83.64 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.
Additional Petroleum Products
Other petroleum products saw declines as well, with March gasoline (RBH23) down 1.5% to $2.4261 per gallon and March heating oil (HOH23) falling 3% to $2.8066 per gallon.
Market Research
According to a sector expert, if the negative oil supply statistics were the reason for the price drop, it should have been evident the day before.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that for the week ending February 3rd, crude stocks increased by 2.4 million barrels, marking the seventh week in a row that they have increased. Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey, two commodity analysts at ING, however observed that “high refinery runs during the week may have supplied support to the market.” The utilization of the refinery rose by 2.2 percentage points to 87.9%, the highest level recorded so far this year. Additionally, the analysts noted that the increased refinery runs resulted in considerable increases in product stockpiles, with gasoline and distillate fuel oil stocks rising by 5 million barrels and 2.9 million barrels, respectively.
After the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that domestic natural gas supplies had decreased by 217 billion cubic feet for the week ending February 3rd, natural gas futures prices continued to rise. According to a study by S&P Global Commodity Insights, the average expert had predicted a loss of 197 billion cubic feet, therefore this number was greater.