Oil prices rose again for the first time yesterday after two days of considerable losses. For a while they looked like chalking up their third day of losses in a row, until prices began to recover in the later course of trading. Brent is trading at $63 per barrel this morning after having recorded a six-week low of $61 for a time yesterday, notes Commerzbank. WTI is currently priced at $58 per barrel, as compared with a low of $56.5 per barrel yesterday. The price recovery was triggered by the inventory data published by the US Department of Energy, which showed that US crude oil stocks decreased by 2.8 million barrels last week. Just the day before, the API had reported an increase in US crude stocks. Significantly lower imports coupled with a rise in crude processing were the main factors in the fourth consecutive inventory reduction. Two other figures catch the eye: US gasoline demand reached 9.73 million barrels per day last week, its highest level since August 2007 and the second-highest since the data series began. The summer driving season in the US has thus started with a vengeance. US crude oil production increased significantly, rising by more than 300,000 week-on-week to 9.57 million barrels per day, which marks its highest level since the early 1970s. A third of the increase was due to the normalization of oil production in Alaska, which had been affected by maintenance work in the week before. According to the US Department of Energy, the rest of the increase was due to revised historical figures. For example, crude oil production in February is now being shown as 167,000 barrels per day higher than it was before. In other words, this does not point to any increase in oil production at the current edge.
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