Oil down over $5 on weak demand

Oil prices settled down more than $5 on Wednesday as fuel demand destruction and a bleaker macroeconomic picture took centre stage in the day’s trade. Brent crude oil futures settled down 5.11, or 5.6 per cent, to $85.81 a barrel while US West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) fell $5.01, or 5.6pc, to $84.22. At their session lows, both benchmarks were down by more than $5, and heating oil and gasoline futures also fell by more than 5%. Crude oil prices have fallen by about $10 since last week’s settlement. Finished motor gasoline supplied, a proxy for demand, fell last week to about 8 million bpd, its lowest since the start of this year, the US Energy Infor­mation Adminis­tration (EIA) reported Wednesday. Some of that demand destruction could be due to torrential rains which brought flooding to New York last Friday and post-tropical storm Ophelia, which doused the Northeast with torrential downp­ours in late Septe­mber, said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho.