Oil Prints Fresh 5-Month Highs, Brent Above $ 46
Oil benchmarks
on both sides of Atlantic paused the corrective slide from Asian hours,
and now resume the recent uptrend as the European traders cheer the
bullish EIA inventory report.
Oil gains in early Europe
Currently
both crude benchmarks are rebounding higher to reach fresh five-month
highs, with WTI now rising 0.54% to $ 44.41 while Brent oil gains 0.61%
to $ 46.08. Oil prices are seen extending to the upside ahead of Europe
open, after having consolidated the previous rise almost through Asia,
in response to the smaller than expected build in the US crude
stockpiles as reflected by the EIA weekly report.
The US crude
stockpiles in the US grew by 2.08 million barrels over the week to April
15, less than the 2.3 million barrels rise expected. While, the US
crude oil production slid to 8.9 million barrels per day (bpd) last
week.
The recent surge in the oil prices was also fuelled by
renewed chatter of another meeting likely to be held by major oil
producers to discuss output freeze in May.
Although the reports were quickly denied by Russia.
Meanwhile,
markets ignored comments from IEA Chief, noting that oil markets would
likely take until 2017 to rebalance and that even that was provided
there was no major economic slowdown.
