Crude oil, the ideal commodity for many of the investors in the commodity market, is being traded very near to the highest price of one week. Crude oil is taking gains and the prices reached to the highest level after the second consecutive gain in the week. According to the American Petroleum Institute, the crude stockpiles in the United States of America have come down for the very first during this year where there were expectations that the crude oil stockpiles will stop the oil prices from coming down.  There were changes seen in the futures in the commodity exchanges in New York as the price of the commodity was evidenced with an increment of 0.5 percent yesterday. Taking the price as the value of the commodity, 0.5 percent refers to a significant number making distinct changes in the overall price of the commodity. According to the API data, the stock of the commodity in the United States of America experienced a downfall to 2.3 million barrels last week. The Department of Energy has shown an increase in WTI price forecast for the year 2013, on the other hand, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has planned for the rise in the demand outlook.

Because the stock of the commodity has come down to a great extent, to balance the current scenario OPEC, for sure has to fulfill an on an average 29.8 million barrels in a day this year which is almost a 100,000 barrels excess than the estimation made a month ago. Bloomberg reports “the producer group’s output in January exceeded this level by 500,000 barrels a day, at 30.3 million, according to OPEC’s monthly market report published yesterday”. The stock of the commodities has come down to 369.5 million barrels and according to the median estimate of the ten analysts in the Bloomberg survey, the forecast is to increase by 2.2 million barrels to 373.9 billion barrels.

One thing where people can find some biasness in the data is that the API collects the information of the stocks on a voluntary basis in which the respondents are the refinery-operators and the operators of the bulk terminals and the pipelines. The Department of Energy’s reports is yet waited for the final analysis related to the product.

Note: This blog is just an expression of the author’s opinion and cannot be deemed responsible for any losses incurred.