On Thursday crude-oil futures logged small gains, though still trading near
three-month lows after posting sharp losses in the previous session on
concerns over U.S. fuel demand and a global supply glut.
On
the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for
delivery in August traded at $51.89 a barrel, up $0.48 in the Globex
electronic session.
On London’s ICE Futures exchange September Brent crude climbed $0.59 to $57.71 a barrel.
Wednesday’s weekly oil data from the U.S. Energy Information
Administration was positive for crude prices, with a bigger-than-expected 4.3 million-barrel decline in stockpiles for the
week ended July 10, the Wall Street Journal reports.
In the meantime, stockpiles for a number of oil products like gasoline and diesel rose in the U.S., despite weaker supply, spurring concerns of declining fuel demand at a time when summer demand should be high.
Investors are still digesting the details of the Iranian nuclear agreement and its impact on oil markets. The general sentiment is that it will take several months for any significant volumes of additional Iranian oil to hit the market.
Fresh Iranian crude exports won’t start until 2016 because sanctions relief will take 4-12 months and will be put in a phased manner, Michael Wittner, head of oil research at Société Générale, said in a report.
By mid-2016, "the global market will be balanced, and able to absorb Iranian volumes without a bearish impact on the markets.”
Other analysts are more downbeat on the Iran developments.
Analysts at BMI Research, a unit of Fitch, said “Considering the existing large oversupply in 2015, the return of Iranian oil volumes to the market will delay a rebalancing in the fundamental global oil markets in 2016.”
Saudi Arabia alone poured more than 1 million barrels a day to global supplies since December 2014, far more than expected from Iran over the coming years, analysts noted.
