Oil traders saw more of the same this week with range bound flat price, strong brent and WTI spreads, weak gasoline spreads and option implied volatility at multi year lows. In terms of physical trading flows we also saw more impact from OPEC supply cuts as US crude exports increased by 200k bpd w/w to 1.2m bpd with trading groups moving American crude to Asia and Lat Am, US crude imports decreased to 7.3m bpd (lower by 2m bpd over the last two weeks) as OPEC allocations to US customers have been cut and mid-east tanker rates dropped on decreased OPEC demand for floating storage and shipments. The market has responded to this bullish progress by pushing deferred WTI and Brent spreads comfortably into backwardation while hedge funds have built record high net length positions in NYMEX WTI and ICE Brent. – While OPEC is making progress on […]