Oil market in the doldrums

Stagnating prices on the oil market this morning sees Brent trading at just shy of $63.5 per barrel, which is almost exactly the same price as yesterday morning.

The report on the availability of petroleum in countries other than Iran published yesterday by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) was hardly likely to prompt the market to reassess the fundamental situation. 

Once again, the EIA confirmed a high oversupply on the market at present, stating that OPEC production totalled 30.7 million barrels per day in June, which is only marginally below the May level, whereas the so-called "unplanned" non-OPEC production outages were somewhat lower in June than in the previous month.

Due to the oversupply of recent months, OECD stock levels were a good 10% higher in June than the average figure for the past three years.