CEE oil macro - Crude oil declines after US inventory and refinery throughput data

Crude oil fell sharply yesterday after a US government report showed that demand dropped last week. US refineries operated at 83.8% of capacity last week, down 1.2 percentage points from the week before, according to the report. According to Bloomberg, analysts expected 85.3% capacity utilization. As a result of lower refinery runs, US crude oil inventories rose by 200 Mbbl last week thus 1.1 percent above the five-year average for the period. Despite a relatively sharp 3.45 million barrels drop in gasoline supplies the last weeks level of gasoline stocks at 232.5 million barrel are still close to a 15 year high. Market took the unexpectedly low refinery runs as a confirmation for falling demand on motorfuels and recession worries started to gain ground again. Crude oil for May delivery fell to 101.3 US$/bbl in the after-hours trading on NYMEX, versus 110.2 US$/bbl at the end of last week. The falling crude oil prices might weight on upstream oriented oils in CEE, despite a slight strengthening of the US dollar yesterday.