Summary:

• Oil rises over $1 in an hour to move above Weds highs
• Spike comes after comments from Saudi oil min
• “Talk of oil market oversupply are without basis”

It’s been a pretty volatile ride for oil traders of late, with the market managing to shrug of a large build in the weekly DOE inventories to end yesterday with with a solid day of gains. There’s been further upside seen this afternoon with some choice words from the Saudi Arabia OPEC governor causing another flurry of buying. 

 Oil has moved above the swing level around 73.20 and also broken above the H1 Ichimoku cloud. This could be seen to signal a possible end to the downtrend that has seen price fall from around $80 to $71 in the past couple of weeks. Source: xStation

Adeed Al Aama has made the following remarks which seem to go against the notion that the kingdom are looking to substantially ramp up their output imminently:

•   July’s exports to be roughly equal to June’s levels
• Talk of oil market oversupply are without basis
• Oil exports in August to drop by roughly 800k bpd

For the record last month’s total was just under 10.5M bpd according to reports by Dow Jones. The remarks will likely be not too pleasing for Trump who has called on OPEC to pump more oil as the average cost of gasoline at retail stations remains stuck near $3 a gallon. However, one of the major factors that pushed oil prices to 3 1/2 year highs is Trump’s decision to restore sanctions on Iran, the world’s fifth largest crude producer and in doing so risk taking a significant amount of the near 4M bpd produced by Iran off the market. 

 However, a daily chart reveals a quite different picture with price below the cloud on D1. Should the accompanying lines also fall below then bears will gain more confidence that the uptrend from last summer may well be coming to an end. 71.20 is a potentially key level to look to below. Source: xStation