Oversupply trumps Yemen crisis

摘要

Oil prices fell amid crude oversupply and despite esca-lating tensions in the Middle East centred on Yemen. Atlantic basin benchmark North Sea Dated fell by$1.39/ bl to$56.03/bl in the two weeks to 9 April,while US marker WTI declined by 64￠/bl to$50.79/bl. US grades WTI,LLS and Mars outperformed North Sea Dated and Mideast Gulf marker Dubai as the return of US refineries from maintenance absorbed more crude.This helped to draw WTI-priced imports from Latin America to the US Gulf coast.Rising US crude runs are boosting prod-ucts output,curbing the need for imports and depressing margins in Singapore and Europe.But they appear to have done little to stem the flow of crude into storage in the US. Commercial stocks rose by 11mn bl to 482mn bl in the week to 3 April,the sharpest increase in 14 years.