Picture used for illustrative purpose. File

Gulf Today Report

Oil slumped on Thursday due to the sharp fall in US crude stockpiles. 

Brent futures were down 1 cent at $48.60 a barrel by 07:46 GMT, after rising around 1.6% in the previous session. West Texas Intermediate crude was off by 4 cents at $45.67 a barrel, after reaching a high of $46.09 earlier and gaining 1.8% on Wednesday.

Following AstraZeneca announcement of a 70% effective COVID-19 vaccine that could go up to 90%, both benchmarks jumped up to 8% earlier this week. 

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 Avtar Sandu, senior commodities manager at Philip Futures said, "despite a number of strong fundamentals rallying the markets, especially vaccine development supporting Oil, bearish concerns remain."

According to data, US Oil stockpiles slumped 754, 000 barrels last week. Analysts predicted 127,000-barrel rise. Stockpiles at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery point for WTI, fell by 1.7 million barrels.