News of a surprise inventories build in the US has caused oil prices to give up earlier gains and turn lower.
The EIA US weekly crude oil inventories came in at +3591K vs -2850K expected and -2547K prior.
The 3.6-million-barrel build suggests weaker demand despite hopes that inventories would draw down more meaningfully due to the US driving season. However, gasoline stocks also rose, coming in at +2654K vs -1024K expected, while the refinery utilization fell to -1.3% vs +0.1% expected.
As a result, crude oil prices turned lower on the session to take out the lows of the past several days.
The key support to watch is at $80.00 – if it breaks this level decisively now then we could see some follow-up technical selling towards $79.00 next.
However, if instead oil prices rise to hit a new high on the session, then this would invalidate any bearish signals we may have seen today.
So, watch the closing prices attentively.
By Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at FOREX.com