The external market background has recently been negative as there have been concerns about the US debt limit issue, economic problems in Spain and fears for a global economic slowdown.
The representatives of ICM Brokers - the broking company, which is among top 5 brokers in the rating by – point out that on Thursday it was reported that the OPEC states had increased the production of oil up to the highest levels since 2008 in order to make up for the lack of oil exports from Libya. The EIA has recently lowered its estimation of the demand for May’s oil while mentioning an increase in gasoline prices up to $4 as a factor that hinders the consumption of gasoline.
On July 29th about 50 oil platforms were closed because of the incoming storm, which led to a slowdown in the production of crude oil by 7% (or 95K barrels a day).
The September crude oil futures recovered from Thursday’s lows.
According to the Department of Commodity Trading, the trading volume in the market of crude oil shows that the bears are currently in control of the situation.
