U.S. crude futures edged lower on Monday, trading near six-month lows reached in the previous session, as brisk supplies kept sentiment weak and stretched oil's losses from last month.
FUNDAMENTALS
* U.S. crude for September delivery <CLc1> dropped 17 cents to $97.71 a barrel by 0010 GMT. The contract fell as low as $97.09 on Friday, its weakest since early February, after losing nearly 7 percent in July.
* Brent oil <LCOc1> was down 14 cents at $104.70 a barrel.
* The front of the Brent futures price curve is trading at a heavy discount to later delivery barrels in a formation known as a contango. This discount has now lasted longer than any since early 2011, reflecting "weak physical demand and an oversupplied Atlantic Basin", Morgan Stanley analysts said.
* CVR Refining LP <CVRR.N> has said that its 115,000-barrel-per-day Coffeyville, Kansas, refinery could be down for four weeks after a July 29 fire in the facility's isomerization unit. The refinery is a big consumer of West Texas Intermediate crude
* U.S. job growth slowed in July and the unemployment rate unexpectedly rose, pointing to slack in the labor market that could give the Federal Reserve room to keep interest rates low for a while. Nonfarm payrolls increased 209,000 last month after surging by 298,000 in June. Economists had expected a 233,000 job gain.
* An asphalt maker in New Jersey became the second U.S. company to publicly confirm buying Kurdish crude oil, saying on it had imported a cargo just weeks before an Iraqi lawsuit over a separate $100 million shipment offshore Texas.
* Growth in China's services sector slipped to a six-month low in July as new orders rose at their weakest rate in at least a year, data showed, taking some of the shine off an industry that has been a bright spot in the Chinese economy this year.
MARKETS NEWS
* The U.S. dollar got off to a calm start this week, having suffered its biggest one-day fall in nearly a month after a batch of economic data led markets to push back expectations for the start of the Federal Reserve's rate-tightening cycle.
Source: Reuters
