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Oil continues October drift lower

The market can't seem to hold on to the momentum triggered in part by abnormal seasonal patterns in the United States.

By Daniel J. Graeber
Crude oil prices continue to drift lower in early Tuesday trading, pulling further away from the seasonal highs reached in September. File photo by Monika Graff/UPI.
Crude oil prices continue to drift lower in early Tuesday trading, pulling further away from the seasonal highs reached in September. File photo by Monika Graff/UPI. | License Photo

Oct. 3 (UPI) -- A possible correction after the September rally in oil prices could be emerging in October as the market Tuesday charted its second consecutive daily decline.

The price for Brent crude oil, the global benchmark for the price of oil, jumped more than 10 percent last month in part because of the U.S. energy sector strains from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Refinery outages in the U.S. Gulf Coast backed up oil in storage, adding a premium for Brent.

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"Looking ahead, a bullish picture remains in place as refiners return to operations and will likely run hard to make up for lost supply, particularly with peak seasonal demand for diesel around the corner," Geoffrey Craig, the oil futures editor at commodity pricing group S&P Global Platts, said in an emailed report.

The return to normalcy means refineries are working overtime. Analysts responding to Platts said they expected to see a draw on U.S. crude oil inventories of around 1.5 million barrels, while U.S. gasoline inventories climb 1.5 million barrels.

The draw on crude would normally send oil prices higher because it would mean the market is starting to balance out, though Craig said the stage may be set for a correction following the rally in September.

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The price for Brent crude oil was down 0.39 percent at 9:15 a.m. EDT to $55.90 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, was down 0.47 percent to $50.34 per barrel.

Brent made a run at $60 per barrel in late September. Some of the rally was fueled by chatter about the effort by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to balance the market through managed production declines. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Tuesday that ministers could be considering a new monitoring mechanism for exports as well.

Markets shrugged off reports Monday of disruptions at the largest oil field in Libya. By Tuesday, analysts at London oil broker PVM said production from the Sharara field, with a peak capacity of around a quarter million barrels per day, was expected to return later in the day.

Elsewhere, inflation for the advanced economies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development increased 2.2 percent in August, up from the 2 percent reported in July. Energy price inflation was the main driver.

The price for crude oil will be influenced late in the day Tuesday when the American Petroleum Institute publishes its data on U.S. crude oil and gasoline inventories.

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