Oil continues to fall for second consecutive day

Oil prices continued to fall as the US market opened on Friday, due to profit-taking from a 13-month high, and fears over a rise in the US crude inventories after the cold weather conditions in country suspended demand from refineries.

US crude fell 2.5% to $58.60, after opening at $60.09, and hit a day high at $60.16, and Brent crude fell 2.3% to $62.12, after opening at $63.60, and hit a day high at $63.60.

US crude lost 2.3% yesterday, on profit-taking from a 13-month high $62.25 a barrel.

While Brent crude futures fell 2.0%, after hitting the highest since January 2020 at $65.49 a barrel.

Energy experts are concerned about a possible build-up in the US crude stocks during the next few weeks due to weak demand from refineries, especially in Texas, due to the cold weather conidiations.

Despite the suspension of about 3.5 million barrels per day of the US oil production, the lack of demand will likely lead to a build-up in stockpiles during the next few weeks, and may lead to another storage problem like the one that was the reason for the prices collapse in April 2020.

The US Energy Information Administration reported on Wednesday that crude inventories fell 7.3 million barrels during the week ending February 12, beating forecasts of a drop by 2.1 million barrels.

The total commercial inventories fell to 461.8 million barrels, the lowest level since the week ending March 20, 2020, in a positive sign of the US domestic demand.

The US production fell 200K bpd last week, to the lowest level since the week ending October at a total of 10.8 million barrels per day.