Oil Prices Pull Back Before Supply Data

U.S. crude-oil futures slipped Tuesday, giving back a portion of gains from the previous session ahead of oil-supply data expected to show a weekly decline in stockpiles.

Crude futures for August delivery  were off 13 cents, or 0.1%, at $97.86 a barrel in electronic trade.

Oil prices on Monday rose $1.43, or 1.5%, on the New York Mercantile Exchange following reports of stronger manufacturing activity in the euro zone and the U.S. in June.

Likewise, the “robust improvement” in corporate sentiment seen in Japan’s tankan survey for June “is encouraging enough for the [Bank of Japan] to maintain its bullish economic and price forecasts for the time being,” RBS Japan chief economist Junko Nishioka wrote to clients Monday.

The Bank of Japan in April launched a massive new monetary-stimulus program to bolster economic growth and rid the world’s third-largest economy of crippling deflation.

Investors were also awaiting cues on energy supplies from a weekly report on U.S. crude-oil stockpiles. Figures were due later Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. U.S. Eastern time from the American Petroleum Institute, with a report from the Energy Information Administration slated for Wednesday.

U.S. commercial crude-oil stocks likely fell 3 million barrels in the week ended June 28, according to a Platts survey of analysts. The projected fall would be “in line with seasonal norms, as shown by the week-on-week change in the Energy Information Administration’s five-year average,” Platts said.

The decline would also be helped by the startup of BP’s   upgraded, 250,000-barrels-per-day crude-oil unit in Whiting, Ind., Platts said.

Analysts were also expecting a 1-million-barrel build in gasoline stocks, and a 1.3-million-barrel increase in distillate stocks.

Oil prices may also react to protests in Egypt, where millions of people were demanding the resignation of President Mohammed Morsi a year after he became the first democratically elected president in Egypt’s history.

Egypt’s military on Monday said Morsi has a deadline of 48 hours to resolve the crisis and “meet the demands of the people,” or it will intervene. The conflict, along with Syria’s ongoing civil war, was raising concerns about instability spreading to other areas of the oil-rich region.

In other energy trading Tuesday, August futures for Brent crude   saw a fractional gain of 2 cents to $103.02 a barrel, while August gasoline  was up 1 cent, or 0.3%, to $2.75 a gallon.

August heating oil  gained 1 cent to $2.88 a gallon, and natural gas for September delivery   remained unchanged at $3.57 per million British thermal units.

Source : Marketwatch