Rising inventories at Cushing, OK, a surprisingly robust growth in crude oil production, slowing import in China and Germany and the debt crisis in Spain were the highlights yesterday. Here is a brief update.
- Trade surplus surprises in China and Germany were attributed to slowing pace of imports and the reason why investors’ outlook remains gloomy. OilNGold.com dissects the reasons why?. Spain’s debt crisis still dominates the arena with little attention paid to higher-than-expected trade surplus of Germany.
- Finchannel.com, on the back of EIA (Energy Information Administration) analysis, notes that Cushing crude oil inventories are up by 43% from mid January to end of March 2012. Part of this is attributed to the flow reversal of the Seaway pipeline but even excluding that impact the rate of growth of crude inventories is substantially higher giving support to demand side worries. Warmer weather than expected kept demand at lower levels as well as Saudi Arabia pumping oil at a 31 year high.
- Jonathan Ratner of financialpost.com focuses on production growth.