- EIA says crude oil inventories in the U.S. increased by 9.9 million barrels.
- Iranian Oil Minister says OPEC is overstating its spare capacity.
Crude oil prices came under a renewed selling pressure in the NA session on Wednesday after the weekly report published by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) revealed that crude oil inventories in the U.S. increased by 9.9 million barrels in the week ending April 26 to come in much higher than the market expectation of 2 million barrels.
After spending the large part of the day in a tight range near mid-$63s, the barrel of West Texas Intermediate turned south and dropped to a fresh daily low of $62.81 before rebounding modestly. At the moment, the WTI is down 0.5% on the day at $63.10.
Earlier in the day, commenting on OPEC’s remarks about supplying the markets in case the U.S. actions on Iran caused shortages, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh claimed that OPEC had been overstating their spare production capacity. Regarding the U.S. policy, “Those who use oil as a weapon against two founding members of OPEC (Iran and Venezuela) are disturbing the unity of OPEC and creating the death and collapse of OPEC and the responsibility for that is with them,” Zanganeh said, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, disappointing PMI data from China, which showed a softer than expected growth in the business activity in both the manufacturing and the service sectors in April, that were published earlier in the week help the bearish pressure stay intact.
Technical levels
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