Europe midday: Stocks sag as oil skids lower
Stocks pulled away from their earlier highs, weighed down by selling in Basic Resources and Oil & Gas names.
By 1159 BST the benchmark Stoxx 600 had erased all of its earlier gains to trade flat at 391.94, while the advance in the German Dax had been cut in half to a rise of just 0.22% or 28.65 points to 12,917.60.
France's Cac-40 was ahead by a similar amount, rising 0.20% or 10.82 points to trade at 5,321.54. Losses in Basic Resources shares sent the Stoxx 600 sector gauge down by 1.54% to 380.18, alongside a 1.40% drop in the Oil & Gas sector sub-index to 295.66.
In the background, front month Brent crude oil futures appeared to be fast losing their grip on technical support at $46.64 a barrel on the ICE.
Market chatter was referencing a bearish report out of Morgan Stanley and continued reports of increasing output in Libya as the chief triggers behind the move.
On 16 June, analysts at Morgan Stanley said OPEC's goal of pushing global oil inventories back to their five-year average might "remain elusive for some time to come".
If confirmed on a close-of-day basis, technical analysts at Web Financial Group believed that could see the global benchmark for oil drop below the $40.0 a barrel mark.
Against that backdrop, investors were waiting to see if a raft of US central bank speakers scheduled for later in the day would echo hawkish remarks from New York Fed chief William Dudley the day before.
The day before, Dudley told a roundtable discussion in Pittsburgh he was optimistic about the US economy and argued in favour of continuing to tighten monetary policy.
Three US central bank officials were set to take to the podium later on Tuesday. They included Boston Fed chief Eric Rosengren at 1100 BST, followed by Fed vice-president Stanley Fischer at 1300 BST and Dallas Fed boss Robert Kaplan at 2000 BST.
On the economic front, figures from the European Central Bank showed that the euro area's current account surplus printed at €22.2bn for April.
Factory gate prices in Germany slipped from a 3.4% year-on-year clip in April to 2.8% for May (consensus: 2.9%), according to the country's Ministry of Finance.
Still on the economic calendar for Tuesday, Belgium's central bank was set to publish its consumer confidence survey for June at 1400 BST.
In corporate news, Safran announced that China's ICBC Leasing inked an $1.1bn deal to buy its LEAP-1A engines to power 40 Airbus A320neo airplanes.
Mediaset acquired an 11.1% stake in Mediaset Premium from Spain's Telefonica.
A consortia of firms, Total among them, won the 15th auction for a shallow water oil and gas block in Mexico.