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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for July delivery lost 46 cents to $61.57 on the New York Merc, while Brent for July lost 47 cents to $64.91 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $11.90 to WTI, up from a discount of $12.80. Natural gas for June lost six cents to $3.36. The TSX energy index lost a fraction of a point to close at 257.01.

Oil prices had a rocky day, jumping on morning headlines that Israel is preparing an attack on Iran, before tumbling on bearish U.S. supply data. The prospect of an Israeli attack (and an Iranian retaliation) raised concerns about hypothetical regional supply disruptions. These gave way to the black-and-white numbers in the latest weekly report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, showing that U.S. crude supplies rose by 1.3 million barrels last week, the opposite of analysts' predictions of a 1.3-million-barrel decrease.

Here in Canada, the Trans Mountain pipeline has reached an eye-catching milestone: "Direct shipment volumes to China [have] surpassed California." So marvelled the analysts behind RBC's Trans Mountain Oil Tanker Shipment Tracker, as they pointed to new monthly data showing that 39.3 million barrels of Trans-Mountain-carried Canadian crude were shipped to China in April, exceeding the 38.1 million barrels shipped to California (by far the largest U.S. destination -- for context, the next-largest was Washington at 9.2 million barrels). On a barrel-per-day basis, this works out to 80,900 barrels a day sent to China, compared with 78,300 sent to California. When all U.S. destinations are added up, the United States is still the largest purchaser by volume of the pipeline's crude, but China is quickly climbing the ranks.

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