{"id":16907,"date":"2023-04-20T19:14:41","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T19:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/oil-prices-fall-as\/"},"modified":"2023-04-20T19:19:02","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T19:19:02","slug":"oil-falls-2-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/oil-falls-2-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil falls 2% on recession fears, swelling US fuel stocks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Laila Kearney<\/p>\n<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) -Oil prices slid by about $2 a barrel to their lowest level since late March on Thursday, dragged lower by fears a possible recession could dent fuel demand and after a rise in U.S. gasoline inventories.<\/p>\n<p>Brent crude futures settled at $81.10 a barrel, shedding $2.02, or 2.4%. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) futures settled at $77.29 a barrel, losing $1.87, or 2.4%.<\/p>\n<p>Both benchmarks fell 2% on Wednesday and are at their lowest since just before a surprise OPEC+ production cut announcement.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;At the end of the day, one of the big reasons why we&#8217;re sliding is fear of recession,&#8221; said Bob Yawger, executive director of energy futures at Mizuho.<\/p>\n<p>The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits increased moderately last week, indicating the labor market was slowing after a year of interest rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve, and fanning concerns about a slowdown in fuel demand.<\/p>\n<p>Gasoline inventories jumped unexpectedly last week by 1.3 million barrels to 223.5 million barrels, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in its report on Wednesday. [EIA\/S] [API\/S] <\/p>\n<p>Implied gasoline demand also fell 3.9% from year-ago levels to 8.5 million barrels a day. U.S. crude stockpiles, meanwhile, dropped by 4.6 million barrels, but analysts said that decline could be short-lived.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Although yesterday&#8217;s EIA crude stock draw of more than 4.5 million barrels looked supportive, all of the reduction was related to a spike in crude export activity that could easily be reversed in next week&#8217;s EIA,&#8221; said Jim Ritterbusch of consultancy Ritterbusch and Association. <\/p>\n<p>Easing some concern about a rate hike-induced recession in the world&#8217;s largest oil consuming nation, economists polled by Reuters expected the Fed to end its tightening with a final 25 basis point rate rise in May.<\/p>\n<p>In Britain, persistent double-digit inflation has bolstered expectations of a further Bank of England rate hike.    <\/p>\n<p>On the supply side, oil loading from Russia&#8217;s western ports in April is likely to rise to the highest since 2019, trading and shipping sources said.<\/p>\n<p>Pakistan has placed its first order for discounted Russian crude under a new deal which could cover 100,000 barrels per day, the country&#8217;s petroleum minister said.<\/p>\n<p>Also weighing on crude prices, equity markets, which often move in tandem with oil prices, were down after disappointing results from Tesla and other companies.<\/p>\n<p> (Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla in New York, Andrew Hayley in Beijing and Katya Golubkova in Tokyo; Editing by Alexander Smith, David Gregorio, Barbara Lewis and Jonathan Oatis)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/oil-falls-2-bbl-on\/crude-oil-storage-tanks-are-seen-in-an-aerial-photograph\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportBusinessNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3J00M-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3J00M-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Laila Kearney NEW YORK (Reuters) -Oil prices slid by about $2 a barrel to their lowest level since late March on Thursday, dragged lower by fears a possible recession could dent fuel demand and after a rise in U.S. gasoline inventories. Brent crude futures settled at $81.10 a barrel, shedding $2.02, or 2.4%. West [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":16908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1213],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-16907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-business","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportBusinessNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3J00M-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16907"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18264,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16907\/revisions\/18264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}