Crude oil futures stumbled on Wednesday, resulting in a turnabout by investors who were distracted by the possibility of an interest rate hike next month by the U.S. Federal Reserve, according to Bloomberg MarketWatch.
June West Texas Intermediate crude slid 12 cents, or 0.3%, to end trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange at $48.19 a barrel. Prices hovered between $47 and $49 a barrel before ending on a rally.
On London’s ICE Futures Exchange, July Brent crude, the global benchmark, dropped 35 cents, or 0.7%, to settle at $48.93 a barrel.
“The market turned decidedly defensive … as a hawkish tone in today’s FOMC minutes sent all dollar-denominated assets lower, including crude oil,” said Tim Evans, chief market strategist at Long Leaf Trading Group.
Despite the incongruent data of the American Petroleum Institute’s 1.1 million barrel decline in crude oil supply, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a 1.3 million barrel increase in crude stockpiles, indicative of a rise in oil supplies.
Data on the storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma reflected an unforeseen rise of 461,000 barrels “despite [output] disruptions from fires in the oil sands” in Canada, said John Macaluso, an analyst at Tyche Capital Advisors.
Meanwhile, June natural gas fell 4.7 cents, or 2.3%, to $2 per million British thermal units.