With oil supply exceeding demand, the market's resultant persistent contango is still feeding inventories. OECD commercial stocks added another 15 million barrels in April, with heavy additions in the US outweighing a draw in OECD Europe, as OECD Pacific was basically flat. Inventories in vessels at sea remain high. But a tightening contango might change the trend of rising stocks (see p1). Preliminary data shows that US crude inventories and "other stocks," which include economically sensitive fuels such as petrochemical feedstock, were the big items, with both at more than 400,000 barrels per day, contributing to rising OECD commercial stocks during April.
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