With US shale oil production surging, inventories remain stubbornly high and prices appear stuck in the low-$50s per-barrel range. In the Houston region, stored oil stocks touched record levels at the end of March, according to energy information provider Genscape. Declining costs for storage is another indication that traders and oil companies are putting less oil in storage than at the height of the price war. At the largest US storage facility at Cushing, Oklahoma, storage tanks costs about 35 cents a barrel per month, traders say, compared nearly 50 cents a year ago. The futures contract LOSc1 for oil storage at the LOOP, off Louisiana's coast, dropped to about 24 cents per barrel recently, one of the lowest prices this year.

Source: bd News24 May 19, 2017 04:52 UTC