Filed under: Major movement, International markets, Forecasts, Consumer experience, Middle East, Oil

When we took a look at oil prices earlier this morning, we saw that traders were selling off the precious crude in anticipation of a bearish inventory report today. Well, the market was shocked by an unexpected large decline in inventories, and prices have reversed course and moved strongly to the upside over the past hour.

Before this week’s report from the U.S. Energy Department, oil prices had dropped to around $85 a barrel but are now trading up $1.36 on the day to $86.63. The reason? A very surprising drop of 5.3 million barrels last week! Prior to today’s report, analysts were mixed but were for the most part expecting to see an increase of about 300,000 barrels. Even the most bullish analysts out there were only expecting to see a decline of 2 million barrels, so the 5.3 million actual draw in inventories definitely caught the market off guard.

The Energy Department attributed the unusual drop to a large decline in imports last week, which fell by 1.3 million barrels a day down to 9.1 million barrels.

Continue reading Oil prices reverse course after inventory report

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 3:59 am and is filed under Stocks Money News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.