Investing.com - Crude prices fell for a third day in a row as trading began in Asia Thursday, responding to a report by industry group API that the largest weekly crude stockpile build in eight months may have taken place in the United States last week.
As such, crude prices gave back more than 3% of those gains in the last 48 hours, particularly after a Reuters report that Saudi Arabia’s state oil firm had informed at least four refiners in North Asia that it would supply them with the full contractual volumes nominated for November.) ran against the very grain of what Riyadh had been publicly telling global oil markets — that its priority was about keeping the market tight, not assuring that supplies were generously available whenever needed.
“Going into the new trading day, moving below $82.35 would increase the bearish bias with the next support at the low last week, at $81.56,” markets’ analyst Greg Michalowski said in a posting on the ForexLive forum.crude for the most-active December contract was down 22 cents, or 0.3%, at $85.60 in the latest session. On Monday Brent reached a high of $89.00 but Thursday it struck a low of $85.19.
The only real bullish element in the API report was the drop of 3.535M barrels for distillates — a feedstock for diesel and heating fuel — versus the prior week’s build of 0.349M.