Crude oil futures were marginally lower during mid-morning trade in Asia Tuesday ahead of the release of last week’s US inventory data, while expectations of a build among analysts kept the WTI structure in contango. At 10:30 am Singapore time (0230 GMT), the December ICE Brent crude futures moved 27 cents/b (0.19%) lower from Monday’s settle at $79.56/b, while the new front-month NYMEX December light sweet crude contract was down 15 cents/b (0.22%) at $69.21/b. NYMEX prompt-month WTI was trading 39 cents/b lower than second-month prices during market close, the widest that the prompt-month has been at a discount to second-month since September 2017. The M1/M2 WTI spread settled at a contango of 19 cents/b on Monday. Growing US crude inventory over the past couple of weeks has been a strong reason to push the […]