NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices slumped to more than two-week lows on Thursday as global stock markets fell, with investor sentiment made more bearish by a bigger-than-expected build in U.S. crude inventories.
Brent crude LCOc1 futures fell $2.83 to settle at $80.26 a barrel, a 3.41 percent loss, after hitting a low of $79.80, its weakest since Sept. 24. The global benchmark has retreated after hitting a four-year high of $86.74 on Oct. 3.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 futures fell $2.2 to settle at $70.97 a barrel, a 3.01 percent loss. WTI hit its lowest since Sept. 21.
U.S. crude inventories USOILC=ECI rose 6 million barrels last week, the Energy Information Administration said, more than double analysts’ expectations of a 2.6 million-barrels increase. [EIA/S]
“The significant increase in crude oil inventories is a reflection of refineries going down for maintenance,” said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.
Refinery crude runs USOICR=ECI fell by 352,000 barrels per day as utilization rates USOIRU=ECI dropped 1.6 percentage points, the EIA data showed.
Falling U.S. equity markets and a global risk-off environment also weighed on crude futures. On Wednesday, U.S. stock markets tumbled, with the S&P 500 and the Dow Industrials indexes posting their worst day in eight months, as solid economic data reinforced expectations of multiple interest rate hikes over the next year.
“The demand side of the oil equation is always much more difficult to discern than the more transparent supply side and as equities slide amidst rate increases, the oil market could begin to discount a worst case scenario with regard to oil
