Oil prices fell today as worries about fuel demand in the US outweighed expectations that the year’s first interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve would spur greater consumption.<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures were down 17 cents, or 0.3%, at $67.27 a barrel this morning, and US West Texas Intermediate futures were down 19 cents, also 0.3%, at $63.38.<\/p>\n
But both benchmarks were still on track to end higher for a second week in a row.<\/p>\n
The Fed cut its policy rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday and indicated more cuts would follow as it responded to signs of weakness in the jobs market.<\/p>\n
Lower borrowing costs typically boost demand for oil and push prices higher.<\/p>\n
“The market has been caught between conflicting signals,” said Priyanka Sachdeva, an analyst at Phillip Nova.<\/p>\n
On the demand side, all energy agencies, including the Energy Information Administration, have signalled concern about weakening demand, tempering expectations of significant near-term price upside, she added.<\/p>\n
“On the supply side, planned production increases from OPEC+ and signs of oversupply in U.S. fuel-product inventories are weighing on sentiment.”<\/p>\n
An increase of 4 million barrels in US distillate stockpiles outstripping market expectations of a gain of 1 million barrels, raised worries about demand in the world’s top oil consumer and pressured prices.<\/p>\n
Economic data also added to concerns.<\/p>\n
Joblessness claims data this week indicated the US labour market has softened, with both demand for, and supply of, workers, falling, while single-family homebuilding plunged to a near two and a half year low in August amid a glut of unsold new houses.<\/p>\n
In Russia, the world’s second-biggest producer of crude in 2024 after the US, the finance ministry announced a new measure to shield the state budget from oil price fluctuations and Western sanctions, easing some supply concerns.<\/p>\n
“President Trump’s comment that he preferred low prices over sanctions on Russia also eased concerns over supply disruptions,” ANZ analyst Daniel Hynes said in a note today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oil prices fell today as worries about fuel demand in the US outweighed expectations that the year’s first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[72,61,60,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-30479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-markets"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}