Oil prices rise amid more China imports

It bought two cargoes of Basrah Light crude oil from Iraq over the last two months to half fill the Visakhapatnam underground cavern that can hold as much as 9.75 million barrels of oil, Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves chief executive officer Rajan K. Pillai said in an interview on August 4.

Now, this was supposed to make oil prices plummet, perhaps closing the door for good on unconventional drilling in the U.S.

The move comes as benchmark prices have collapsed on the back of a global glut and waning demand.

New York-traded oil futures have been under heavy selling pressure in recent months as worries over high domestic U.S. oil production weighed.

While analysts say that weekly production data may be unreliable due to information lags, traders closely watch monthly production reports.

A global oil oversupply since last summer, led by stubbornly strong US shale crude output and record output by Middle East producers, have driven prices down from June 2014 highs above $US100 a barrel. At present, every Re 1 increase in the exchange rate of dollar raises the oil import bill by Rs 7,455 crore, according to the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, an arm of the oil ministry. Plus the fact the Chinese authorities have passed on lower crude oil prices in the form of lower retail fuel prices as part of the effort to encourage more domestic consumption and less reliance on exports for economic growth.

“I think that there is definitely going to be more bearish momentum to what we are seeing now, and we could see oil prices fall further”.

At 1323 BST, the Brent front month futures contract was down 1.71% or 86 cents at $49.55 a barrel, retreating from $50-level calls overnight.

“U.S. production remains near the highest level in four decades, although the commodity price is telling the U.S. shale sector to shrink, ” OPEC said in its report. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index gained 0.4 percent. “We’re seeing a currency affect initially and the stimulatory impacts of this has not been priced in yet”. It climbed $1.80 to $50.41 on Monday.

Gasoline futures settled down. For 2016 EIA estimates gasoline to cost $2.40 a gallon at the pump, down 15 cents compared with last month’s estimate.

Benoît Faucon contributed to this article.