Oil prices nose-dive after surprising build in US crude oil stocks

Oil prices came under massive pressure yesterday. Brent shed more than 3% and is trading this morning at a seven-month low of less than $47 per barrel. WTI fell by a good 4% yesterday, and at $40.3 per barrel now finds itself at its lowest level since March 2009. Yesterday's price slide was triggered by official inventory data from the US Department of Energy, which showed a surprising 2.6 million barrel increase in crude oil stocks last week.

The day before, however, the API had reported a decrease of 2.3 million barrels. There are two main reasons why things turned out differently after all: on the one hand, crude oil processing declined by 254,000 barrels per day week-on-week, says Commerzbank.