(New York) Oil prices chained a third consecutive session of decline on Wednesday, stifled by the persistent pressure of inflation and its impact on the world demand for black gold.
Posted at 3:40 p.m.
The price of a barrel of Brent North Sea oil for December delivery fell 1.91% to close at $92.45.
That of the barrel of American West Texas Intermediate (WTI), for delivery in November, lost 2.32%, to 87.27 dollars.
Prices had left ostensibly in the green in the first part of the session, before the publication of an American indicator reversed the trend.
Producer prices rose 0.4% over one month in September in the United States, more than the 0.2% expected by economists.
“This will only strengthen the resolve of the Fed (American central bank) to raise its rates by 1.25 percentage points by the end of the year”, reacted the economists of Oxford Economics, which would bring the rate range between 4.25% and 4.50%.
The prospect of continued brutal monetary tightening by the Fed raises fears for the trajectory of the US and global economy.
Central bankers ‘insist that they will remain aggressive [sur le plan monétaire]which will contract the demand for crude oil to make gasoline and diesel,” said Robert Yawger of Mizuho.
“It’s all about recession fears”, according to the analyst, who warns that if the US CPI consumer price index, due Thursday, also comes out above expectations, “it could be the same [pour les cours]with an exclamation point.
For Sophie Lund-Yates of Hargreaves Lansdown, the downward revision of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) global growth estimate for 2023 from 2.9% to 2.7% “has injected fear into the oil market, a recession guaranteeing a reduction in the demand for black gold”.
The tune was picked up by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which lowered its forecast for crude demand growth by 500,000 barrels per day for 2022 and nearly 400,000 barrels for 2023.
To justify the revision, OPEC cited China’s zero-COVID-19 policy, the “economic challenges” facing Europe, and “inflationary pressures in other economies.”
“On a ten-year scale, oil prices are still reasonably high, especially when compared to pandemic lows,” Sophie Lund-Yates recalled. Therefore, according to the analyst, “there is still a long way to go before reaching a bottom” for prices.