By Barani Krishnan
Investing.com - Oil prices settled mixed on Monday as supportive moves by OPEC and risk-on across markets helped smooth over concerns about the ramp up in new U.S. coronavirus cases.
New York-traded West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for U.S. crude futures, settled down 2 cents at $40.63 per barrel.
London-traded Brent, the global benchmark for oil, climbed 30 cents, or 0.7%, to settle at $43.10.
Traders cited OPEC heavyweight Saudi Arabia’s move to hike the official selling price of its crude to Asia as one factor holding up the market.
The Saudi-led and Russia-assisted OPEC+ alliance of some two dozen oil exporters have also pledged to slash production by a record to 9.7 million barrels per day for a third month in July. From August, the cuts are due to taper to 7.7 million bpd until December.
Also supporting oil was the expected drop in Libyan exports as forces opposed to the government in Tripoli continued to block shipments out of the North African country. Global equity markets, led by a rally in Asia that extended to Wall Street, gave crude a boost too.
Offsetting some of that upward momentum was data from market intelligence firm Genscape, as well as rival Seevol.com, that suggested a substantial build in crude stockpiles at the Cushing, Oklahoma, hub that took delivery of oil delivered on expiring WTI contracts.
Genscape reported a 2.5 million barrels increase in Cushing stockpiles while Seevol cited a 1.6 million-barrel build.
“There are more negatives than positives in the market actually, with talk of disappointing gasoline consumption ahead of the 4th of July weekend and a resulting build in Cushing,” said John Kilduff, founding partner at New York energy hedge fund Again Capital.
Then, of course, are the swelling new caseloads of Covid-19 across the United States, while the Trump administration continues trying to downplay the outbreak.
Texas, the largest U.S. oil refining state, and Florida, the leisure hub of America, both report their biggest daily rise in new confirmed cases of coronavirus over the past few days, bringing total U.S. infections to over 2.8 million and deaths to nearly 130,000.
The numbers registered as President Donald Trump said 99% of new COVID-19 cases in the country were “harmless”. That led to a diplomatic rebuttal by U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner Stephen Hahn, who told CNN the infections were “a serious problem” and that the authorities “must do something to stem the tide”.