Oil futures traded lower Wednesday ahead of official data on U.S. crude stocks.
The weak tone was attributed in part to a weekly report from the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, that reported a 3.7 million barrel rise in crude inventories late Tuesday. The API data came ahead of the more closely watched weekly report from the Energy Information Administration due later Wednesday. Analysts surveyed by The Wall Street Journal forecast, on average, a 2.4 million barrel decline.
The U.S. benchmark, West Texas Intermediate crude for September delivery CLU8, -3.49% fell 76 cents on the New York Mercantile Exchange, or 1.1% to $66.28 a barrel. The global benchmark, October Brent crude LCOV8, -2.66% dropped 71 cents, or 1%, to $71.75 a barrel.
“Oil prices are falling further this morning in response to an unexpected increase in US crude oil stocks as reported by the API,” wrote commodity analysts at Commerzbank, in a note.
Compared with the price declines suffered by precious and base metals, however, oil prices have held up “amazingly well,” they said, attributing the resilience in part to the U.S. renewal of sanctions against Iran. Citing data from the International Energy Agency and private tanker data, they noted that Iranian oil shipments to Europe dropped “noticeably” in July, totaling just 410,000 barrels a day, around 140,000 barrels a day less than June and 340,000 barrels a day less than the 2017 average.
A plunge by the Turkish lira USDTRY, -5.9738% buoyed the U.S. dollar in recent days, putting pressure on commodities. A stronger dollar can be a negative for commodities priced in the U.S. unit.
The ICE U.S. Dollar Index DXY, +0.23% a measure of the currency against a basket of six major rivals, was up 0.1% on Wednesday.
In other energy trading, September gasoline futures RBU8, -2.25% fell 0.2% to $2.0303 a gallon, while September heating oil HOU8, -2.23% dropped 0.9% to $2.1106 a gallon.
September natural gas NGU18, -0.44% was off 0.4% at $2.948 per million British thermal units.
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