Expectations that Wednesday's US government report would show the third weekly decline in crude inventories in the world's biggest energy-consuming nation as storms disrupted production and imports. Oil prices strengthened in anticipation of further declines in US crude oil inventories, triggered by hurricane activity around oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico. US crude oil futures were marginally up to US$57.46 a barrel while London Brent crude futures rose to US$57.36 a barrel.
This has been the most active start to hurricane season on record, with five named storms since the season began on June 1, 3 of which have forced evacuations and production shut-ins from offshore platforms. Domestic production and imports are estimated to take a couple of weeks to return to their normal patterns, only if no additional storm activities occur. Opec revised down wards its forecast for demand growth in 2005 by 150,000 bpd, following on from last week's report from the International Energy Agency, which lowered its forecast for global oil demand growth this year by 200,000 bpd.
20-Jul-05 
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