The unexpected increase in US crude oil inventories has cooled market speculation about supply shortages, coupled with a strong dollar exchange rate, which has led to the second consecutive day of a pullback in international oil prices.
New York's May crude oil futures closed down 27 cents or 0.33% at $81.35 a barrel on Wednesday. London Brent May crude oil futures, which expired on Thursday, closed down 16 cents or 0.19% at $86.09 a barrel. The more active June crude oil futures closed down 22 cents at $85.41 a barrel.
The US Energy Information Administration earlier announced that crude oil inventories rose by 3.16 million barrels last week, while expectations were for a decrease of 1.275 million barrels; gasoline inventories rose by 1.299 million barrels, while expectations were for a decrease of 1.65 million barrels; distillate inventories decreased by 1.185 million barrels, while expectations were for an increase of 518,000 barrels. The data reflects that the import volume of US crude oil is higher than expected, and demand is not as strong as expected, which is bad news for oil prices.
At the same time, the US dollar index rose to a one-month high, which is also not good for oil prices.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+) will hold a meeting next week to assess the implementation of production quotas by various countries. The market generally expects that this expert meeting will not make any changes to the quota mechanism, leaving it for the ministerial meeting in June to discuss.
According to a Reuters survey, OPEC member countries produced an average of 190,000 barrels per day more than their quotas in February. The market believes that there will be more obvious differences in the discussion of compliance issues at this OPEC+ meeting.
