Crude Continues Climb Higher On Better Supply & US Inflation News

After rising around a percent on Wednesday, crude is up again during the APAC session after a lower-than-expected US CPI print, and the US’ EIA reported a drawdown in crude and product inventories. Fires are threatening Canada’s oil sands region with two close to Fort McMurray. A softer USD is also providing support with the BBDXY index down 0.1%.

• Brent has found support around $83.00 and is currently up 0.4% to $83.09 after a low of $83.01 and high of $83.25. WTI is hovering around $79 to be up 0.5% today.
• EIA reported a crude drawdown of 2.51mn barrels last week after -1.36mn bringing them to the lowest level in almost a month. Gasoline stocks fell 235k and distillate -45k. Gasoline demand rose 78kbd. Refinery utilisation rose 1.9pp to 90.4%.
• The oil sands are well outside Fort McMurray but employees live in the town and so the fire threat may disrupt crude production through staff shortages. Operators have said that while they have reduced staff levels, operations haven’t yet been impacted.
• The next major scheduled events for oil will be US April core PCE inflation on May 31 and the OPEC meeting on June 1 to decide the way forward for its output cuts.
• Later the Fed’s Barr, Barkin, Harker, Mester, Bostic and BoE’s Greene speak. There are also US jobless claims, April housing, IP, trade prices and May Philly Fed index.