WTI/RBOB Tumble After Surprise Crude, Gasoline Builds

After dropping to a $48 handle, WTI bounced off its 200DMA, but remains well down from last week’s levels before the DOE-reported surprise gasoline build. The initial kneejerk reaction lower in WTI/RBOB after API reported an unexpected crude build and yuuge gasoline build.

API

• Crude +897k (-1.75mm exp)
• Cushing -1.971mm
• Gasoline +4.445mm (+500k exp)
• Distillates -36k

Following last week’s surprise DOE reported build in gasoline inventories, API reports a huge build (bioggest in 3 months) and a surprise crude build (even as Cushing saw a big draw – the biuggest since feb 2014)

Prices are well down from last week’s API/DOE data prints, but bounced higher today into the API print. This initial reaction was a push lower in both WTI  and RBOB…

“A lot of it is technical here. It looks like we hit the support at the 200-day for WTI (~$48.91),” Bart Melek, the head of global commodity strategy at TD Securities in Toronto, says by phone. Market was “anticipating a further constructive decline in commercial crude oil inventories,” Tim Evans, energy analyst at Citi Futures Perspective in New York, writes in note.