Oil prices are down overnight but playing headline roulette with every word that comes out of any leaders' (or non-leaders') mouth as ceasefire chatter (now denied) has WTI riding a roller-coaster (but below $100 once again as we write).

“Flows and actions matter more than words,” said Giovanni Staunovo, a commodity analyst at UBS Group AG.

And while inventory data may not be the market-moving event in this new regime, it is useful to see signs of stockpiling or demand.

DOE

A sizable crude build (the sixth weekly rise in total US crude stocks in a row) was mirrored by the seventh weekly drawdown in gasoline stocks...

Stockpiles at Cushing, Oklahoma, also rose for the sixth consecutive week.

A 520,000-barre- build takes inventories at the storage hub to the highest level since July 2024. Stockpiles at Cushing are now firmly above 30 million barrels. 

Stocks for all transport fuels in the US dropped this week with diesel falling 2 million barrels to the lowest level since mid-March.

That fuel, alongside jet, is in the spotlight as the Iran war has had an outsized impact on the price of those fuels compared with gasoline. 

Interestingly, US crude production slipped lower again last week. Refinery crude runs fell for the first time in five weeks. Despite the drop, they remain at a multi-year seasonal high. 

Oil prices dipped after the data...

The surge in market volatility has made intraday trading choppier, with many traders having to curb position sizes.