Pressured By The U.S. Fiscal Impetus

Crude has struggled since settlement, with WTI and Brent sitting ~$0.70-0.80 below their respective settlement levels, pressured by the late NY U.S. fiscal dynamic that we have mentioned elsewhere, while U.S. President Trump's latest round of tweets provided little in the way of support for the space. This comes after the benchmarks added over $1.00 apiece on Tuesday.

• The weather situation in the Gulf of Mexico continues to come under scrutiny, with 29.2% of Gulf production shut in, per the BSEE's Tuesday estimate.
• There were fresh comments surrounding the Norwegian oil strike, which is set to widen on October 10 if a deal does not come to fruition.
• Elsewhere, Saudi Arabia prescribed marginal lifts in its pricing for flagship crude oil shipments to Asia for the month of November.
• Finally, late Tuesday saw the release of the API crude inventory estimates, which failed to provide any notable deviations vs. expectations, via relatively modest moves across the 4 major inventory counts.