U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures' discount to international benchmark Brent settled at $6.11, 18 cents lower than Monday's settle.
A narrower discount makes U.S.-linked grades less attractive to foreign buyers. The spread had widened to a discount of $7.23 a barrel on Monday. The arb has been flirting with the sweet spot minus $6.00 at which exports start to rise and imports dip.
Still, coastal grades are seeing demand from Asia, a dealer said. China's oil trading giant Unipec had swept up low-priced supplies of crude from the United States, for example, in January.
Inland grade WTI Midland was flat as U.S. crude oil inventories rose last week to their highest levels since June 2021, the Energy Information Administration said.
Crude inventories climbed 4.1 million barrels in the week ended Jan. 27 to 452.7 million barrels, compared with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a rise of 0.4 million barrels.
In refining news, U.S. oil refiners are expected to have
about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) of capacity offline for
the week ending Feb. 3, decreasing available refining capacity
by 63,000 bpd, research company IIR Energy said.
* Light Louisiana Sweet for March delivery was
unchanged at a midpoint of a $3.50 premium, trading between a
$3.30 and a $3.70a barrel premium to U.S. crude futures .
* Mars Sour rose 75 cents to a midpoint of a $2 discount and traded between a $1.80 and a $2.20 a barrel discount to U.S. crude futures .
* WTI Midland was flat at a midpoint of $1.95 and traded between $1.80 and $2.10 a barrel premium to U.S. crude futures .
* West Texas Sour fell 25 cents to a midpoint of an 80-cent discount and was bid and offered between a 60-cent and $1 a barrel discount to U.S. crude futures .
* WTI at East Houston, also known as MEH, traded between $2 and $2.40 over WTI.
* Brent crude futures fell $2.62 to settle at $82.84
a barrel.
* WTI March crude futures fell $2.46 to settle at
$76.41 a barrel.
* The Brent/WTI spread narrowed 18 cents to
settle at minus $6.11, after hitting a high of minus $5.89 and a
low of minus $6.20.
(Reporting by Arathy Somasekhar, editing by Deepa Babington)
