Oil Drops After Refinery Fire and Strong USD

West Texas Intermediate crude fell to a four-month low amid global declines in stocks and commodities and after CVR Refining LP said a Kansas refinery won’t start operating soon.

The plant in Coffeyville may be shut for four weeks after a fire this week, CVR Chief Executive Officer Jack Lipinski said today on an earnings call. The plant uses crude from Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for WTI futures. The Bloomberg Commodity Index (BCOM) dropped to a five-month low and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index headed for the first monthly drop since January.

“Coffeyville is bringing the market down,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at the Price Futures Group in Chicago. “You are going to be using less crude from Cushing. There is also broad concern about global stock markets.”

WTI for September delivery slid $1.77, or 1.8 percent, to $98.50 a barrel at 12:50 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The volume of all futures traded was about 20 percent above the 100-day average. Prices are down 6.5 percent in July, the most in nine months. The premium of September contracts over October slumped to 96 cents from $1.23 yesterday on the highest volume since July 23.

Brent for September settlement slipped 83 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $105.68 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. Volume was 12 percent above the 100-day average. The European benchmark crude was at a premium of $7.17 to WTI on ICE, from $6.24 yesterday.

via Bloomberg

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza