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Driving forces of crude inventory - WTI slips below $33/brl to hit multi-year lows

We think this is nothing but "demand supply equation seems heading a rampant", as per the US department of energy, demand during end of 2015 was weaker than at any time in more than ten years, and was 9.3% down on the YoY basis in the past four weeks. The uncommonly mild climate was no doubt responsible.

As a result, the evident 5.1 million barrel decrease in crude oil stocks could do little to offset this, especially since the API had reported a similarly large inventory reduction the day before and crude oil stocks at Cushing had climbed to a record level of almost 64 million barrels.

The downswing suffered by crude prices has further picked up pace. Brent shed 6% during trading yesterday, while WTI was down by 5.6%. Their losses have been on a similar scale for some of the time today.

At their lowest points, both oil types were trading only marginally above $32 per barrel - this is the lowest level since April 2004 in the case of Brent. WTI fell its lowest level since December 2003.

The price slide was triggered by further shocking news from China and the inventory data for last week published yesterday by the US EIA, which evidenced a massive 10.6 million barrel increase in US gasoline stocks - the most pronounced weekly rise since 1993.

Distillate stocks also climbed sharply by 6.3 million barrels. Both inventory builds were attributable to a significant decline in demand. This may not be particularly unusual for gasoline during the winter months, but it certainly is for distillates.

The extremely negative sentiment, the technical picture and current momentum suggest that the price slide will continue further despite a state of speculative hyperbole having already been reached, it wouldn't be boasting as it looks like Goldman Sachs turning out to be more accurate in anticipation on crude who said $20/brl a few months ago which was highly impossible to achieve.

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