(New York) Oil prices, very volatile since the discovery of the new variant of COVID-19, gave some ground on Wednesday in a feverish market, impatient with the outcome of the two-day meetings of OPEC and its allies through the OPEC + agreement.
The price of a barrel of Brent from the North Sea for delivery in February, which is the first day of use as a benchmark contract, dropped 0.52% or 36 cents to 68.87 dollars.
In New York, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for the month of January fell 0.92% or 61 cents to 65.57 dollars.
Reflection of the extreme volatility of prices since the appearance of the new variant and the change of tone, more firm, of the American central bank, the Fed, vis-à-vis inflation, the two contracts gained almost 3% earlier in the session.
The thirteen members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), led by Saudi Arabia, held on Wednesday by videoconference the first of their two summits scheduled for this week, without any conclusions having been released to its issue.
The decision eagerly awaited by the market, namely the level of production of the cartel at the beginning of next year, will not be known until the end of the second summit on Thursday, which is also attended by its ten allies, via the OPEC + agreement, taken by Russia.
“The arrival of the Omicron variant and the fall in prices that followed obviously increase the chances that OPEC” will choose to press the pause button, “said Helima Croft, of RBC, rather than increasing production by 400. 000 barrels a day as it has been doing every month since May.
The multiplication of health restrictions put in place to counter the spread of the new strain of COVID-19, the dangerousness of which we do not yet know, threaten the demand for black gold.
This strategy would also be an attempt to curb as best they can a fall in prices unfavorable to the producers’ funds, by more than 10% since Thursday evening, despite the current rebound.
Investors also took note on Wednesday of the state of crude oil inventories in the United States last week.
The latter fell less than expected by analysts, according to figures released Wednesday by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA), of the order of 900,000 barrels.
The market is also closely monitoring the Iranian nuclear negotiations which resumed on Monday.
Iran, the historic producer of OPEC, has been excluded from the market since Donald Trump’s denunciation in 2018 of the 2015 nuclear agreement, which was supposed to prevent Tehran from acquiring atomic weapons.
A possible lifting of sanctions would lead to an increase in the cartel’s supply in a context that has become more uncertain for demand.