Oil surpassed USD 52/ bbl today ahead of the US stocks report which is expected to show crude stocks down for 6 weeks in a row, however it is still uncertain if the OPEC led oil supply cuts will materialise.

Despite the fact that growth in US shale oil production is slowing, it still makes OPEC’s efforts to cut supply and normalize global inventories more difficult, keeping benchmark prices capped at around $50/bbl on this quarter.

Oil prices rise for a 3rd straight session after US crude stockpiles fell by 10.2M bbls last week.

Brent crude is currently trading around $49/bbl as the market was boosted by rumours that Saudi Arabia could cut output by 1 m bbl’s/pd.

Opec still pumping too much oil and according to the latest statements of the region Saudi Arabia is expected to cut crude oil shipments to its customers in August by more than 600k bbls/day.

The latest developments in oil news show that crude oil snapped again, after a week of constant upward movement, as Russia stated that they will oppose to any proposals to extend the OPEC production cuts.

Due to the hit in a major refinery in Salina Cruz refinery (WCMex),  which is not expected to be restarted until the end of July 2017, Pemex (Mexican National Petroleum Company) is looking to import about 3.5M bbls if refined products to meet the outages creates.

Oil fell over 2% on Tuesday and traders seem to expect a bigger drop in the market.

Just a few weeks after the announcement of OPEC regarding the extension of the oil production cuts, production in Libya, Nigeria and Iraq increased by roughly 336,000 bbl/day.

Tensions in the Middle East flared up on Monday, when Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain cut off ties with Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism.

In the latest medium-term Oil Market Report published by the IEA, there are optimistic forecasts that the oil market will be gradually tightening due to lower upstream investments and growing oil demand.

According to ministers and delegates, oil producers group is very likely to extend production cuts for another 9 months,  in order to tackle the global glut of crude.

Despite output cuts that Saudis and Russians push to extend, oil prices fell on Wednesday after reports showed an increase in US crude inventories.

Earlier this week analysts reported that Saudi Aramco will cut exports to Asia by almost 7 Mbbls in June.

Latest reports showed that the decrease of US crude stocks was higher than expected and this assisted in the rebound of the oil prices from 2017 lows.