Oil prices slump after report of rising US stocks

The OECD’s composite leading indicator, which covers the western advanced economies plus China, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia and SA, peaked in January but has since fallen and slipped below trend in May and June.

World trade volume growth also peaked in January at almost 5.7% year-on-year, but nearly halved to less than 3 percent by May, according to the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.

The US and China have been locked in a tit-for-tat trade spat for a few months, gradually adding tariffs to each other’s products in a dispute that threatens to curb economic activity in both countries.

Chinese oil importers now appear to be shying away from buying US crude oil as they fear Beijing may decide to add the commodity to its tariff list.

Not a single tanker has loaded crude oil from the US bound for China since the start of August, Thomson Reuters Eikon ship tracking data showed, compared with about 300,000bpd in June and July.

Meanwhile, investors are watching the impact of US sanctions on Tehran, which analysts say could remove as much as one-million barrels per day of Iranian crude from the market by 2019.

BMI Research said oil markets would “struggle for direction, as uncertainty around both the impact on supply from the Iranian sanctions and escalating trade tensions between the US and China persists”.

Reuters