Commodities: Oil, metals´ futures buoyed by Chinese import data

Oil and metals´ prices were buoyed on Wednesday by a solid reading on Chinese commodity imports.

"China’s commodity imports held up well in May," analysts at Barclays wrote in a research note sent to clients, with the year-on-year pace of oil purchases from abroad up by 38.7%.

Similarly, imports of copper ore and concentrate rose by 13% and 45%, respectively.

Weakness in the US dollar also lent a hand, with the spot index for the greenback off by 0.29% to 93.56 points as of 19:00 BST.

In parallel, Bloomberg´s commodity index was sporting gains of 1.82% to 89.89, amid nearly across the board gains.

The sharpes advances were seen in precious metals, with the April 2016 COMEX gold contract up by 1.33% to $1,263.60/oz. and silver futures rising 3.88% to $17.03/oz..

West Texas Intermediate was gaining 1.37% to $51.05 per barrel on NYMEX, boosted by reports of further attacks by militants against oil installations in the Niger Delta.

The latest US oil stockpiles data were rather neutral. Commercial crude oil inventories fell by 3.2m barrels per day in the week ending on 3 June, according to the EIA.

However, that decline was offset by builds in all the major product categories.

Going the other way on Wednesday were natural gas futures after the International Energy Agency warned in its Medium Term Market Report that global natural gas markets were set to face a massive increase in new supplies until 2020.

That saw NYMEX-traded July 2016 natyural gas futures skid 0.69% to $2.46/MMBtu.

COMEX copper futures rose 0.54% to $2.0620/lb..

Corn futures on CBoT advanced 1.05% to $4.3225 per bushel and those for wheat by another 1.52% to $5.1675 per bushel.