Tuesday, after touching three-week lows and with the recovery of the United States dollar, as well as the weaker petroleum demand in China; oil prices held firm and settled barely an inch. Brent crude futures, the international benchmark traded at $50.80 a barrel, which was 7 cents higher after thinning to $50.02 during the session.
The United States West Texas Intermediate established down by 4 cents and traded at $47.55, from a session low of $47.02 which was considered as WTI’s lowest since July 25. Both Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude have touched two-month highs early this month, however, collapses over the past few-day, plunging for more than 2.5% on Monday.
Meanwhile, official data showed that Chinese oil manufacturer that operated in July seem to be at their lowest daily rates since September of 2016; in which traders and analysts have claimed that the fall was sharper and abrupt than expected, this raised concerns over the state of Chinese demands and the level of domestic stocks.
In accordance to this, John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC said investors are taking a hard look and observing every detail at what the balance is, he also said that they’ve seen in the past few weeks that demand growth was strong and that this turned that on its head. In addition, analysts are saying that sufficient supply from massive oil exporters which includes the OPEC and the United States also cheered traders and investors to sell long positions which were bought in July during a period of increasing prices.