An exemplary day for the crude bulls as Brent flat price rallied sharply, breaking into $85/bbl handles, hovering around $85.45/bbl at the time of writing (16.50 GMT). In line with OPEC earlier in the week, the IEA revised its view on oil demand growth this year, raising its view for the fourth time since November. The agency forecast demand will rise by 1.3mbbls/d in 2024, a 110kbbl/d increase from last month, albeit still lower than the 2.3mbbl/d last year. At the same time, the IEA cut its supply forecast for 2024 by 800kbbl/d. US inflation data came in higher than expected with the producer price index for final demand rising 0.6% last month, above the 0.3% forecast though this had minimal impact on crude prices today as Tuesday’s CPI data had already primed the market for an increase. The one-month and six-month Brent futures spreads are sitting at $0.73/bbl and $4.35/bbl respectively.
