(London) Oil prices resumed their rise on Wednesday, after a fall in prices the day before, reflecting in particular a supply of black gold which remains insufficient in the face of growing demand.
Posted at 6:46 a.m.
Around 6:15 a.m., the price of a barrel of Brent from the North Sea for delivery in April gained 0.92% to 94.14 dollars.
In New York, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in March took 0.83% to 92.83 dollars.
“Crude oil prices are up again at the start of the day on Wednesday, after the losses of the previous session”, commented Ricardo Evangelista, analyst at ActivTrades.
On Tuesday, prices had fallen more than 4%, the largest daily decline since the end of November 2021, pushed by signs of de-escalation in the Ukraine crisis, as Russia announced the start of a withdrawal of its troops massed on the border with Ukraine.
For Ipek Ozkardeskaya, analyst at Swissquote, it was an expected “reflex reaction” with the signs of relaxation, “but it is important to keep in mind that oil prices have skyrocketed due to lack of supply and dwindling world reserves”.
The crisis in Ukraine has added “additional pressure to an already bullish context, but it only explains part of the gains”, continues the analyst. “Therefore, the end of Ukrainian worries will not mark the end of the rise in oil. »
“The fundamentals that underpin recent oil price gains remain in place, with insufficient supply in the face of growing global demand,” says Ricardo Evangelista.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies (OPEC+) are maintaining a cautious pace of increasing their total level of production, and are still struggling to meet their targets.
Investors will turn on Wednesday to weekly data from the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) on crude inventories from the United States, the world’s largest consumer of oil.
For the past week, analysts expect crude inventories to have fallen by 2.174 million barrels and gasoline inventories to have risen by 500,000 barrels, according to the median of a consensus compiled by Bloomberg.