The major crude benchmarks hover around.........>

OIL: The major crude benchmarks hover around unchanged levels as we move towards

European hours. Wednesday saw WTI & Brent settle lower, bringing an end to their

week-long winning streaks, with the latest DoE inventory data providing mixed

news (although the much shallower than expected headline build in crude stocks

and decent enough dip in gasoline stocks will be welcomed by both bulls and

producers, they will need to see more of this/outright headline crude drawdowns

before gaining more conviction), while U.S. equity markets lacked any clear

sense of direction.

- Wednesday also saw RTRs source reports note that "Russia's oil output in the

first five days of May fell to 8.75 million barrels per day (bpd), close to its

production target of 8.5 million bpd for May and June under a global deal to cut

crude supplies." This is a positive given some of Russia's past compliance

issues, although more still needs to be done.

- Elsewhere, Russian industry officials noted that U.S. oil production could

fall by 2-3mn bpd in 2020. For reference, the latest weekly DoE data pointed to

a ~200K fall in weekly crude production in the States.