By Adedapo Adesanya
The Brent Crude oil traded at $60.04 (9PM Nigerian Time) on Tuesday, giving Nigeria new hopes that funding its 2019 budget may no longer be under threat. The nation, which relies heavily on income made from the sale of its crude oil for revenue, set the benchmark for this year at $60 per barrel.
But in the past few weeks, the commodity has been trading lower, casting doubts on the possibility of government to meet its obligations back home.
At the market yesterday, the Brent Crude saw an increase of 30 Cents equivalent to 0.5 percent. Last week, the black gold was sold for as low as $54 per barrel.
As for the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) Crude, it saw no growth as it dropped 3 Cents equal to 0.05 percent to trade at $56.09.
Oil prices were trading up on Tuesday prior to the data release as the market clawed its way back up after reaching 2019 lows last week as prospects for demand growth dimmed in the wake of the ongoing trade dispute between China and the United States.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a crude oil inventory draw of 3.45 million barrels for the week ending Aug 15, compared to analyst expectations of a 1.889-million barrel draw.
The API this week reported a 403,000-barrel draw in gasoline inventories for week ending Aug 15. Analysts predicted a build in gasoline inventories of 169,000 barrels for the week.
Distillate inventories rose by 1.806 million barrels for the week, while inventories at Cushing fell by 2.803 million barrels.
US crude oil production as estimated by the Energy Information Administration showed that production for the week ending August 8 stayed the same at 12.3 million bpd, just 100,000 bpd off the all-time high of 12.4 million bpd.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration report on crude oil inventories is due to be released at its regularly scheduled time on Wednesday at 10:30a.m. EST.
Dipo Olowookere