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Crude oil keeps dropping

29 January 2010 08:10 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA-Economics. Commodity markets were under pressure yesterday as risk appetite remained subdued amid uncertainty over the likely impact of measures by China to tighten monetary policy, the Financial Times reported.
In energy markets, crude oil prices were lower after the latest US weekly inventories data.
Nymex March West Texas Intermediate dropped $1.04 $73.67 a barrel while ICE March Brent lost $1.05 at $72.24 a barrel.
US crude stocks dropped 3.9m barrels last week, compared with the consensus forecast for a rise of 1.4m barrels. However, much of the drop was explained by weak imports, down 673,000 barrels a day to 7.87m b/d last week as fog affected shipments in the Houston ship channel.
Demand from US refineries remained weak with refinery utilisation up 0.1 percentage points to 78.5 per cent. Refinery activity sank to the lowest rate in 20 years - excluding shut-downs caused by hurricanes - in the previous week.
US refineries are due to start seasonal maintenance programmes which is likely to act as a further drag on their demand for crude oil.
The impact of the fall in crude inventories was largely offset by evidence of disappointing weakness in demand for petrol and heating oil.
Petrol stocks increased 2m barrels, above the consensus forecast for a rise of 1.1m barrels. Nymex February RBOB unleaded gasoline was fractionally lower at $1.9670 a gallon.
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