West Texas Intermediate crude for February delivery fell 52 cents, or 0.6%, to settle at $82.12 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. March Brent crude, the global benchmark, lost 20 cents, or 0.2%, at $84.47 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. WTI and Brent both finished Wednesday at their highest since Nov. 9. Among the petroleum products traded on Nymex, February gasoline fell 0.3% to $2.384 a gallon, while February heating oil edged up by nearly 0.6% to $2.609 a gallon.
Crude got a boost Wednesday after the EIA reported a larger-than-expected 4.6 million-barrel fall in U.S. crude supplies for the week ended Jan. 7. Supplies, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, stood at 413.3 million barrels, the lowest since 2018. “Although the fall in crude inventory was expected, rising gasoline stockpiles helped by further [SPR] releases by the Biden administration have helped level off prices,” said Louise Dickson, senior market analyst at Rystad Energy. “It remains to be seen whether this balance will last or if more bullish sentiment will return as the economy rebounds in the coming weeks.” “However, downside risk remains as the demand for refined products continues to slump, keeping prices in check,” she said, in a note. WTI remains up more than 9% since the start of the new year, while Brent is up more than 8% over the same stretch.
A record number of patients are currently in U.S. hospitals with COVID-19, but scientists see signs that the infection wave driven by the highly contagious omicron variant may be nearing a peak.
Dickson said Brent’s march toward $85 a barrel reflected optimism over Europe’s economic outlook and prospects for oil consumption, boosted by the by the lifting of restrictions to slow the spread of omicron by some countries in Europe.
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