Oil fell on Wednesday after data showed a surprise rise in the United States (US). crude inventories and the US-Chinese trade dispute threatened oil demand, although Middle East tensions capped losses.<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures were at $70.84 a barrel at 0903 GMT, down 40 cents. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $61.22 per barrel, down 56 cents.<\/p>\n
US crude stockpiles rose last week by 8.6 million barrels in the week to May 10 to 477.8 million, data from industry group the American Petroleum Institute showed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
This compared with analyst expectations for a decrease of 800,000 barrels.<\/p>\n
Official data on stocks from the US Energy Department\u2019s Energy Information Administration will be released later on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday called the trade war with China \u201ca little squabble\u201d<\/em> and insisted talks between the world\u2019s two largest economies had not collapsed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Oil prices have drawn support after Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday that armed drones struck two of its oil pumping stations, two days after the sabotage of oil tankers near the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven that nearly one-third of global oil production and nearly all of global spare capacity are in the Middle East, the oil market is very sensitive to any attacks on oil infrastructure in this region,\u201d<\/em> Swiss bank UBS said, adding it expected Brent prices to rise toward $75 in coming weeks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The attacks took place against a backdrop of US-Iranian tension following Washington\u2019s decision this month to try to cut Iran\u2019s oil exports to zero and to beef up its military presence in the Gulf in response to what it said were Iranian threats.<\/p>\n
The US military said it was braced for \u201cpossibly imminent threats to U.S. forces in Iraq\u201d<\/em> from Iran-backedforces.\u2014 Reuters<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil fell on Wednesday after data showed a surprise rise in the United States (US). crude inventories and the US-Chinese trade dispute threatened oil demand, although Middle East tensions capped losses. Brent crude futures were at $70.84 a barrel at 0903 GMT, down 40 cents. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $61.22 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78022,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78019\/revisions\/78022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}