- Oil prices extend yesterday's losses to trade at their lowest levels in more than a month, as refinery outages following Hurricane Harvey continue to raise concerns of weaker demand for U.S. oil; WTI -1.6% at $45.80/bbl, Brent -0.6% at $51.57.
- “The fact that U.S. Gulf Coast refinery capacities of ~2.5M bbl/day are out of action because of Harvey is weighing on WTI. By contrast, the oil production outages in the Gulf of Mexico and at the Eagle Ford shale play amount to less than 1M bbl/day," Commerzbank (DE:CBKG) analysts say.
- The storm mostly skipped the offshore platforms and instead forced refineries to shut down, which will "increase stocks which are already far too high instead," Mark Yusko, CEO and CIO at Morgan Creek Capital Management, tells CNBC. "So you're going to see some negative pressure [on crude oil prices] in the short term."
- Yusko is sticking with his year-end forecast of WTI in the $40-$60 range, but due to Harvey he now expects prices will stay at the lower end of that projection longer.
- ETFs: USO, OIL, UWT, UCO, DWT, SCO, BNO, DBO, UGA, DTO, USL, DNO, OLO, SZO, OLEM, OILK, WTIU, OILX, WTID, USOI
- Now read: Crude Oil - Post Harvey
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