Oil Prices Gain Despite Bigger-Than-Expected Build in Crude Inventories
Investing.com
Published Feb 20, 2020 01:14AM ET
By Alex Ho
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Investing.com - Oil prices gained on Thursday in Asia even after the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a bigger-than-expected build in crude inventories.
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U.S. Crude Oil WTI Futures gained 0.5% at $53.77 by 1:10 AM ET (05:10 GMT). International Brent Oil Futures climbed 0.4% to $59.34.
U.S. crude stockpiles rose by 4.2 million barrels last week, the API said in its weekly report. That compared with analyst expectations for a build of 2.5 million barrels.
Analysts expect that the Energy Information Administration (EIA) will report a build of 2.5 million barrels when it issues numbers tomorrow morning. The EIA numbers are due at 11:00 AM ET.
Concerns about a supply squeeze in Libya and U.S. sanctions on a unit of Russian energy firm Rosneft were cited as tailwind for the oil markets today.
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Reports overnight said ceasefire talks in the Libyan civil broke down after the Libyan National Army destroyed a Turkish ship in the Port of Tripoli. The port was said to be carrying weapons and ammunition, Bloomberg said.
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Ceasefire talks in the Libyan civil war broke down amid reports that the Libyan National Army, led by renegade General Khalifa Haftar, had destroyed a Turkish ship in the Port of Tripoli, which it said was carrying weapons and ammunition.
Libya was exporting 1.2 million barrels a day," Phil Flynn, analyst at Chicago’s Price Futures Group, said in a Bloomberg report. "That is more than the demand destruction estimates of about 400,000 barrels a day to about 1 million a day. Whatever the real demand destruction is, it's clear that Libya is offsetting a lot of that and after years, the odds of Libya oil exports coming online have gone down dramatically.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. said it was imposing sanctions on a unit of Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer, for maintaining ties with Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and its state-run oil company.
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