Crude Oil Trades Below $45 Amid Concerns of Cushing Oil Surplus

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Oil futures fell below $45 a barrel on Monday as traders sold some of their positions after a nearly 20% climb in April, according to Bloomberg MarketWatch.

Data that reportedly shows a significant weekly rise in stockpiles at the Cushing, Oklahoma storage hub, rising output from major oil producers, and some downbeat U.S. economic figures that hinted at the potential for weaker energy demand combined to pressure prices Monday.

June West Texas Intermediate crude traded at $44.88 a barrel, down $1.04, or 2.3%, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

July Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures Exchange fell $1.18, or 2.5%, to $46.19 a barrel.

Traders on social media said that energy data provider Genscape on Monday reported a weekly climb in crude stockpiles of more than 800,000 barrels at Cushing. Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group, suggested that the rise may be due to the recent flooding in parts of Texas.

Genscape’s numbers on Cushing inventories tend to be “pretty accurate because they are tracking actual pipeline flows,” said Robbie Fraser, commodity analyst at Schneider Electric.

“However, what the market really cares about from the American Petroleum Institute and U.S. Energy Information Administration numbers is the overall crude stock change since that’s more representative of the overall market fundamentals,” he said.

Looking ahead, the outlook for oil is unclear, as the focus for price direction “swings between positive and negative” influences, said Nico Pantelis, an analyst at Secular Investor.

OPEC crude oil production surged by 484,000 barrels to 33.217 million a day in April, according to a Bloomberg survey released Friday.

Still, Pantelis said WTI oil could climb toward the $50 to $60 level this summer, “where it could settle for a while. “Of course, this scenario doesn’t take into account extraordinary events, which is always the unknown factor in the Middle East,” he said.

June natural gas traded at $2.067 per million British thermal units, down 11.1 cents, or 5.1%.