DTN Oil Update
Oil Off Month-Highs on Hormuz, US Inventory Watch
SECAUCUS, N.J. (DTN) -- Crude futures retreated Wednesday from one-month highs as traders awaited official U.S. petroleum inventory data for last week amid mixed signals for energy freight on the Strait of Hormuz from the U.S.-Iran war.
By 9:19 a.m. EDT, NYMEX WTI crude for October delivery fell $0.48, or 0.48%, to $89.74 bbl. ICE Brent for November delivery moved down $0.18, or 0.17%, to $94.47 bbl.
P[L1] D[0x0] M[300x250] OOP[F] ADUNIT[] T[]
Downstream, NYMEX ULSD for October delivery eased $0.0060, or 0.07%, to $4.6713 gallon. RBOB for October advanced $0.0507, or 1.65%, to $3.1858 gallon.
The U.S. Dollar Index gained 0.063 points to 99.700 against a basket of currencies.
Crude futures rose earlier to a one-month high of $92.29 on WTI and $97.04 on Brent, boosted by Tuesday's, Sept. 1, data from the American Petroleum Institute indicating that U.S. commercial crude oil stocks fell by 2.6 million bbl during the week ended Aug. 28.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration will publish official inventory data for last week at 10:30 a.m. ET.
The U.S. and Iran were back on a war footing on Wednesday after the most significant exchange of fire in weeks, with Washington threatening more devastating strikes.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the U.S. attacks would further restrict traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway that carried about one-fifth of the global oil consumed before the conflict and which Iran has effectively closed to commercial shipping.
Two oil tankers hit sea mines and were disabled while attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday, in a statement shared by state media.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said on Tuesday that 17 million bbl transited the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, saying it marked the highest level of crude oil to pass through the waterway since the Iran war had reduced flows. But market participants are wary the flows could drop dramatically if hostilities worsened on the strait.