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Oil price continues dancing around $50 level

Brent oil price crept above $50 yesterday on around-consensus inventories and IEA increasing oil demand forecast.

Yesterday's weekly U.S. oil inventory report from the EIA showed draws in crude and gasoline stocks, larger-than-expected build in distillates.

Release: EIA oil data (Consensus)

Crude: -1.682M barrels (-1.817M)
Distillates: 2.994M barrels (1.250M)
Gasoline: -1.251M barrels (0.647M)
Refinery utilization: 0%

In its monthly report, the International Energy Agency increased its oil demand for 2015 forecast by 200,000 barrels per day to 1.6 mio. bpd. However, the supply glut will remain at least one year ahead.

How far will they go? The recent devaluation of the Chinese yuan causes financial market jitters as uncertainty over the huge country's economic health increases and fear of a global 'currency war' seems to be spreading. Chinese oil consumption was around 10.12 mio. bpd in July, a 4% decrease from last month.

On the economic data front, no potential market movers coming up apart from a row of European inflation data and U.S. Retail Sales.