- WTI is down 17c to $39.12/Bbl, and Brent is down 56c to $40.47/Bbl
- Oil prices were mostly unchanged Wednesday morning after falling over 3.2% on Tuesday
- The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a 831 MBbl reduction in crude stocks last week, keeping oil prices from falling further Tuesday afternoon on Globex
- Government figures are due out later this morning
- Royal Dutch Shell Plc will cut as many as 9,000 jobs as the crude's price crash early this year forced billions of dollars in cost savings and the supermajor overhauls its business to embrace clean energy (Bloomberg)
- At Shell, 7,000-9,000 job loses are expected by the end of 2022 — amounting to as much as 11% of the workforce
- The company predicts cost savings of $2 billion to $2.5 billion by that time
- Around 1,500 people taking voluntary redundancy this year, the company said Wednesday
- Shell plans to "refocus" its refining business, eventually reducing the number of plants to fewer than 10, from the 15 it's involved in today
- "We have to be a simpler, more streamlined, more competitive organization," CEO Ben van Beurden said
- EIA weekly data is due at 9:30 AM CST
- U.S. Crude Inventories: + 456 MBbls (Avg. Bloomberg surveys)
- U.S. Gasoline Inventories: — 1,368 MBbls
- U.S. Distillate Inventories: — 1,374 MBbls
- U.S. Refinery Utilization: — 0.20% change