Azernews.Az

By Trend

Oil edged lower Wednesday unable to shake off the downbeat mood of the last two days in response to a sharp rise in U.S. stockpiles of products like gasoline, pointing to weak demand during the summer driving season in the United States, reports Trend citing to Reuters.

Brent crude LCOc1 futures were down 10 cents at $63.56 a barrel by 0840 GMT. They fell 1% on Wednesday, and 3% on Tuesday.

U.S West Texas Intermediate crude CLc1 futures were down 19 cents at $56.59. The U.S. benchmark dropped 1.5% in the previous session, and 3% on Tuesday.

Mixed signals from the United States and Iran also left market in limbo. U.S President Donald Trump said on Tuesday progress had been made with Iran but Tehran denied it was willing to negotiate over its missile program.

U.S. officials also said on Wednesday they were unsure whether an oil tanker towed into Iranian waters was seized, or rescued.

Data on Wednesday from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed a larger-than-expected drawdown in crude stockpiles last week, but traders focused instead on large builds in refined product inventories dragging prices down.

U.S. crude inventories USOILC=ECI fell 3.1 million barrels, the EIA said, more than analysts’ forecasts for a decrease of 2.7 million barrels.

But gasoline stocks USOILG=ECI rose 3.6 million barrels, compared with analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll for a 925,000-barrel drop. Distillate stockpiles USOILD=ECI grew by 5.7 million barrels, much more than expectations for a 613,000-barrel increase, the EIA data showed.

“Due to the combination of unattractive weekly statistics on U.S. oil inventories from the EIA and sluggish performances from the stock markets Tuesday’s sell-off did not turn out to be a buying opportunity, at least not for the time being,” PVM analyst Tamas Varga said.