$44.30 down 54 cents last, after touching $43.57.
We've been calling for a trade into the 30's and will have more specificity if/when we get there.
From the Houston Chronicle's Fuel Fix blog:
Oil slumped to the lowest price since March 2009 in New York on speculation that record U.S. supply may start to strain the country’s storage capacity.
Crude tanks in the U.S. may fill up as drilling-rig cuts fail to slow production growth this year, the International Energy Agency predicted. Speculators cut bullish bets on oil to the lowest level in more than two years while short wagers rose to a record, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show. Talks between the U.S. and Iran resumed in Switzerland to try and reach a deal on the Persian Gulf country’s nuclear program.
Oil slumped for a fourth week after government data showed U.S. output and stockpiles expanded to the highest levels in more than three decades, exacerbating a glut that drove prices almost 50 percent lower last year. The market hasn’t bottomed yet because tanks at the U.S. storage hub are reaching full capacity, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Bloomberg Television.
“It looks like we have a temporary glut within the glut,” Jens Naervig Pedersen, a commodities analyst at Danske Bank A/S, said by e-mail from Copenhagen. “Weak demand, moderate economic growth and a stronger dollar cannot keep pace with production, which continues to look relatively strong. Consequently, inventories are moving closer to capacity.”
West Texas Intermediate for April delivery lost as much as 2.8 percent to $43.57 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and was at $44.62 at 10:33 a.m. London time. The contract fell $2.21 to $44.84 on Friday, capping a 9.6 percent loss for the week, the most since December. The volume of all futures traded was about 30 percent above the 100-day average for the time of day. Prices have decreased 16 percent this year.
U.S. Supply
Brent for April settlement, which expires today, slid as much as $1.34, or 2.5 percent, to $53.33 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The European benchmark crude traded at a premium of $9.75 to WTI. The more active Brent contract for May was 36 cents lower at $54.65.
Global spare oil-storage capacity is “not as tight as we thought previously” and there’s about 377 million barrels of onshore storage space left, according to Societe Generale SA. U.S. crude tanks are 63 percent full, Michael Wittner, the head of oil market research in New York, said in an e-mailed report dated March 14....MORE
