Crude-oil futures edged lower in Asian trading hours Monday as investors stayed on the sidelines ahead of economic data due later this week.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in October traded at $92.01 a barrel at last check, down $0.40 in the Globex electronic session. November Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange fell $0.50 to $97.89 a barrel. Both oil benchmarks ended higher last week after two consecutive weeks of losses, with Nymex October crude gaining 14 cents and Brent crude for November delivery gaining 43 cents a barrel in the week ended Sept. 19. Nymex crude for October delivery is due for expiry later Monday. “Prices have been moving sideways, further reiterating our support for WTI and Brent at support levels of $91.40 and $96.81 respectively,” analyst Howie Lee at Singapore’s Phillip Futures said. He said crude prices will continue to test their respective support levels and it is unlikely they will rise significantly as weak global demand has largely been priced in by the market.
Healthy supply levels and softening demand have weighed on oil prices, offsetting the impact of a recent outage at Libya’s 250,000 barrels-a-day Sharara oil field. “For this week, expect market focus to shift back to more mundane data-watching …” OCBC said. On tap this week are economic data from the U.S., Europe and China, including manufacturing data from the world’s second largest economy due on Tuesday.
Meanwhile speculators, such as hedge funds, pension funds and others, added to bullish bets on crude-oil prices in the week ended Sept. 16, according to CFTC data. Traders said this may indicate a fresh cycle of buying after the recent selloff in oil markets.