(London) Oil prices gave up some ground Wednesday as announcements of the release of strategic crude stocks multiply in major consuming countries.
By 6:05 a.m., the price of a barrel of Brent North Sea for January delivery fell 0.40% to $ 81.98.
In New York, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for the same month lost 0.28% to 78.28 dollars.
Brent and WTI rose 3.27% and 2.22% respectively the day before, a paradoxical move after the White House announced a release of 50 million barrels of crude in an attempt to lower the costs.
But “the devil is in the details,” said Jeffrey Halley, analyst for Oanda, noting that this volume is spread over several months.
The market, which had largely anticipated this announcement “had probably planned a more important intervention”, expose for their part the analysts of ING.
China announced Wednesday that it too would draw on its oil reserves in order to lower prices.
Beijing, however, did not specify when these withdrawals would take place or how much oil the government planned to put on the market.
With India, South Korea and the United Kingdom, the total injected into the market would be in the order of 65 to 70 million barrels, estimates Helima Croft of RBC.
Investors are also closely monitoring the state of trading stocks in the United States.
According to the federation of oil companies in the United States, the American Petroleum Institute (API), those of crude rose by 2.3 million barrels last week.
Investors are now awaiting the release of data from the US Energy Information Agency (EIA), considered more reliable.
Gas prices were on the rise, encouraged by “an arctic blast that brings snow to Europe and tensions between the European Union (EU) and Russia” at the Ukrainian border, points out Ipek Ozkardeskaya, of Swissquote Bank.
In recent days, the United States, NATO and the EU have continued to express their concern about Russian troop movements around Ukraine, the scene since 2014 of a conflict between Kiev and pro-Russian separatists. in the East.
Moscow has denied any belligerent will, blaming the tensions on the West, from whom Kiev has said it wants to buy more “defensive” weapons.
The benchmark European price, the Dutch TTF, gained around 6:10 a.m. 0.27% to 91.17 euros per megawatt hour (MWh), and nearly 5% over the last three sessions.