© Reuters.
By Gina Lee Investing.com – Oil fell Friday morning in Asia, continuing Thursday’s losses on mounting concerns that cold snap-shut refineries in Texas and surrounding areas will take time to reopen, which in turn, it will weaken demand for crude. fell 1.64% to $ 62.88 at 11 pm ET (4 am GMT) and slid 1.90% to $ 59.37, falling just below the $ 60 mark. Brent and WTI contracts rose, driven by a wave unprecedented cold. With up to a third of US production reported closed, attention is shifting to the impact on producers. “The market is concerned about refinery outages in Texas, where Arctic weather has caused power outages and frozen wells and pipelines,” ANZ Research said in a note. Lack of demand from refineries will likely lead to a build-up of crude stocks in the coming weeks, despite the fact that around 3.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of US oil production has been shut down, add the note. Some US refineries may advance maintenance work normally scheduled for the spring, ahead of the summer driving season, Citi analysts said in their own note. “Refinery outages could be deeper and more lasting, especially before the spring maintenance season, as some plants may decide to anticipate planned changes of approximately 500 kb / d in total over the next month,” adds the note from Citi. showed a draw of 7.258 million barrels in the week through February 12. This was higher than the 2.429 million barrel draw in the forecasts prepared by Investing.com and the 6.644 million barrel draw recorded the previous week. released a day earlier showed a draw of 5.8 million barrels.
