Prices for oil dipped on Wednesday as the fuel oversupplies continue to take their toll on the prices. The rise in US inventories and the ongoing excessive supplies from OPEC have marred the oil prices since the last few years.
Despite an agreement to increase and extend cuts, the lack of discipline in the OPEC members to uphold the amounts has caused the markets to be oversupplied and underpriced.
Markets were relatively stable yesterday, as the strong demand from China upheld the prices in the oil market. But concerns over rising inventories of the world’s second largest importer of oil; US have sent the prices down again.
Brent crude futures, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $48.73 per barrel at 0128 GMT, down 11 cents, or 0.2 percent, from their last close.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $46.28 per barrel, down 12 cents, or 0.3 percent.
U.S. crude stocks rose last week, adding 1.6 million barrels in the week to July 14 to 497.2 million barrels, industry group the American Petroleum Institute said late on Tuesday.
Major chunk of US oil imports come from Canada and Saudi Arabia, which have seen a decline of 47.5% and 70.1% respectively due to rising production of shale oil in the US which has nearly doubled the in recent years.
