By Barani Krishnan
Investing.com - There’s little comfort for oil bulls these days, whether in macro data or barrel count. A weaker-than-expected survey of U.S. manufacturing was the latest blow to those long crude Monday, echoing similarly bleak surveys from around the world.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude settled down 45 cents, or 0.8%, at $53.62 per barrel.
U.K. Brent oil settled down 36 cents, or 0.6%, at $58.89.
“Crude oil is not only back to the range of August, but it is also back near the lows of the range,” said Olivier Jakob of Zug, Switzerland-based oil risk consultancy PetroMatrix.
The market has fallen without pause since the last settlement higher on Sept. 23, losing 9% in that stretch.
Prices slumped for a sixth day in a row after The Institute of Supply Management’s manufacturing PMI posted its lowest reading in 10 years, falling to 47.8 in September and disappointing consensus forecasts of a rebound above 50.
Earlier in the day, similar surveys from Japan to the euro zone and U.K. had also painted a picture of a global manufacturing sector still suffering from the fallout of the U.S.-China trade conflict, Brexit and other concerns.
Even data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration has been working against oil bulls lately.
The EIA released its July tally for oil products on Monday, showing demand picked up by a modest 0.3%, or 60,000 barrels per day, versus a year ago.
But within that, gasoline sales were down 1.6% year on year (or 156,000 bpd) and distillates fell -1.4% (56,000 bpd). While jet fuel demand was stronger, and the rest of demand growth came from less visible products such as LPG (up 2.1%), fuel oil, asphalt or petroleum coke. Demand for gasoline was at the lowest level for the month of July since 2015.
Jakob of PetroMatrix particularly noted that crude production at 11.806 million bpd was 900,000 more than a year ago.
Production in North Dakota, one of the states forming the mammoth Bakken shale oil play, itself reached record highs in July.
Total U.S. petroleum stocks in July were 100 million barrels above last year, although overall U.S. output was 276,000 bpd less than in June.
“Behind the headline number, it is important to note that most of the drop was due to weather impact on offshore Gulf of Mexico,” Jakob added.
The EIA will release next its weekly dataset on crude balances, gasoline inventories and distillate stockpiles slotted at 10:30 AM ET on Wednesday. Analysts tracked by Investing.com are projecting a 1.1 million bpd build for crude for the week ended Sept. 27, that will add to the previous tally of nearly 3.5 million barrels over the past two weeks.
The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, will issue its own snapshot at 4:30 PM ET today on what the EIA numbers are likely to be.