From Citi:
Oil prices rose marginally last week (Brent up 0.04%, WTI up 1.08%), capping a fourth straight week of gains that should gratify OPEC ministers given that their agreement to come to an agreement in November is partly responsible for the 12-13% rise since the Algiers informal meeting last month. Many questions remain about what exactly is required to balance the market, and Iraq’s insistence that the secondary source data used by OPEC to estimate its own production is wrong is both an additional problem for the organization to navigate, but also highlights the bigger issue of data inadequacies in the oil market.
The much cited oil market oversupply has, for the last 4 weeks, at least, been notably belied by the data. Weekly oil inventories in the US, Japan, Singapore and the ARA region have drawn down 35.9-m bbls over the last four reporting weeks to 1.65-bln bbls. The US has accounted for 22.9-m bbls of this draw-down (after adjusting for the change in lease stocks, see US EIA Petroleum Statistics).
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