Oil futures dropped on Wednesday to their lowest settlement since early October, as President Joe Biden sought ways to lower the price of gasoline for U.S. consumers.

Reports that a joint release of crude supplies was discussed by Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a virtual meeting earlier this week led to sharp losses for oil Wednesday. Biden has also asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether illegal conduct has led to the rise in retail gasoline prices. Prices failed to find support even though government data revealed a weekly decline in U.S. crude inventories, the first in four weeks.

Oil futures fell Friday, with strength in the U.S. dollar and the threat of a possible release of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve contributing to a decline in prices for the week.

During a White House press conference Friday, U.S. Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the U.S. continues to look at “every tool in our arsenal” to lower gasoline prices, and has taken a range of actions, including engaging with entities abroad such as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. “What this tells us is that behind the scenes in the White House, they’re not quite sure what to do,” Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at The Price Futures Group, told MarketWatch. He said an SPR release and a ban on U.S. oil exports would both fail to provide any lasting relief from high oil and gasoline prices. A release from the reserve “will only serve to increase demand,” he said. “It will artificially lower prices in a market where the demand is insatiable and fundamentally undersupplied,” Flynn said. A ban on U.S. oil exports, meanwhile, would serve to make U.S. production fall given that the U.S. produces light oil that is “better suited for foreign refineries.”

Meanwhile, a strengthening dollar was also weighing on dollar-denominated prices for oil. The ICE U.S. Dollar Index, a measure of the currency against a basket of six major rivals, was on track for a 0.9% weekly rise.

Looking ahead, focus will be on whether or not OPEC+ sticks to its plan for increasing output by 400,000 barrels per day each month or slows those increases down, said Tyler Richey, co-editor at Sevens Report Research. “The former would likely cause some price weakness, while the latter would support a continue rally across the energy space.”

Oil futures ended higher on Thursday to recoup a small portion of the losses suffered a day earlier, after U.S. inflation data sent bond yields and the dollar soaring and underlined fears of a potential release of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. “The oil bulls are licking their wounds following the $3 selloff” on Wednesday, said Bjørnar Tonhaugen, head of oil markets at Rystad Energy, in a daily note.

Oil traders continued to digest Wednesday’s weekly data from the Energy Information Administration, which showed that domestic crude inventories, which exclude those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve(SPR), rose by 1 million barrels in the week ended November 5. That matched the average forecast of analysts polled by S&P Global Platts. The EIA also reported declines in gasoline and distillate stockpiles.

On Thursday, December gasoline tacked on 0.9% to $2.3178 a gallon, but December heating oil fell 0.2% to $2.4471 a gallon.

The SPR, meanwhile, saw a decline of 3.1 million barrels last week to 609.4 million barrels, according to the EIA, which had a footnote detailing that the number “includes non-U.S. stocks held under foreign or commercial storage agreements.” “Although part of the planned SPR auctions that the U.S. had announced a long time ago — not part of the much discussed possibility of an extraordinary Biden intervention — the unexpected size of the…draw rang some bearish bells on trading floors, adding to inflation concerns,” said Tonhaugen.

Combined with the year-over-year jump in U.S. consumer inflation, “the market is torn between current tightness in crude markets and negative risks to demand from monetary policy, which would likely strengthen the [U.S. dollar] and negatively affect emerging markets purchasing power for, among other goods, oil,” he said.

Looking ahead, the next market-moving factor for oil may be the weekly update on the number of active U.S. oil drilling rigs from Baker Hughes on Friday, Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research, told MarketWatch. Baker Hughes reported an increase of six oil rigs last week. “There is a lot of interest in the turning point for U.S. shale production and rig activity has increased very slowly,” said Lynch. After that data, the International Energy Agency’s oil market report will be released Tuesday.

“The combination of supply chain problems, rising COVID cases in Germany, and the gradual reduction in fiscal stimulus might make traders worried about near-term oil demand,” Lynch said.

Oil eked out a gain on Monday as Saudi Arabia is raising prices, but the rally cooled after the U.S. signaled measures to ease oil and gasoline prices.

Futures in New York closed 0.8% higher, paring gains of as much as 1.7% earlier in the session. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said that President Biden may make an announcement to address high oil and gasoline prices this week. Granholm didn’t specify any particular measures, but the U.S. has said that releasing crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is one option it’s considering to cool prices. Still, prices were supported by the biggest increases to some of Saudi Arabia’s official selling prices in decades at the end of last week. Asian buyers will probably take their full contractual volumes of oil next month, despite the higher costs, signaling a strong market.

The markets traded sideways throughout most of the afternoon, waiting to see if the U.S. would release crude from the strategic reserves and if so, how much. Only a coordinated effort from the U.S. with other consumer countries could substantially bring prices down, said John Kilduff, founding partner at Again Capital LLC “They got to go pretty big because they want to try to make an impact,” said Kilduff. “If they can do that, then you’ll see a reprise of a sell-off we saw last week; but if it falls short it will be a buying opportunity.”

Oil prices have soared this year to the highest since 2014, fanning inflation and lifting product prices, as the roll-out of vaccines boosted mobility and stoked energy demand. High energy prices led Biden and other consumer countries to lobby the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies to step up the pace of their supply output. Despite foreign pressures, the alliance chose to stick with a planned, modest hike of 400,000 barrels a day, keeping oil in the $80 range and raising the possibility of an SPR release. The Biden Administration will be scrutinizing a monthly U.S. report published on Tuesday, according to Granholm.

Meanwhile, US crude stocks in the strategic petroleum reserve fell by 3.14 million barrels last week, the biggest weekly drop since July 2017, data from the Department of Energy show, ahead of weekly figures due on Wednesday. The release of figures comes as investors speculate that Biden will tap into emergency reserves to quell rising prices.

In Washington, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the $550 billion infrastructure bill, allocating billions for repairs of roads, bridges, and other major projects. Analysts see the bill as providing another upside for oil on the horizon.

Oil rallied on Friday, rebounding a day after a drop to the lowest price since October, but still suffered a loss for a the week, their second in a row. Prices fell on Thursday after OPEC+, which is comprised of members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies, said it would raise the monthly overall production by 400,000 barrels a day in December, but the group also pushed back against pressure from the Biden administration to pump more oil.

The market decided to reduce risk on Thursday, “at a time that pressure mounts for more OPEC+ output, while Saudi Arabia is reported to soon exceed the 10 million [barrels per day] threshold of oil production,” said Bjørnar Tonhaugen, head of oil markets at Rystad Energy, in a daily market note. Thursday’s price drop was “sharp and maybe a bit exaggerated too,” he said. OPEC+ “offered no surprises and stuck to its conservative policy, closing the ears to U.S. calls for extra production,” said Tonhaugen. A correction of Thursday’s price fall, and a price rise was “something to be expected” Friday.

West Texas Intermediate crude for December delivery climbed $2.46, or 3.1%, to settle at $81.27 a barrel. Thursday’s action saw crude tumble 2.5% to settle at $78.81 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, pushing front-month contract prices to the lowest finish since Oct. 7, according to Dow Jones Market Data. For the week, WTI prices lost nearly 2.8%, for a second weekly loss in a row, following a nine-week streak of gains — the longest for front-month contracts based on records going back to April 1983, according to Dow Jones Market Data. January Brent crude,  the global benchmark, rose $2.20, or 2.7%, to $82.74 a barrel, with prices down 1.2% this week. Brent tumbled 1.8% on Thursday, its lowest finish since Oct. 1.

“OPEC+ carefully tries to protect the market balance and amid the downside risks to demand the alliance is concerned —no wonder they opt to tread carefully,” said Tonhaugen. “However, it will not be a surprise if OPEC+ at its next December meeting decides to reengineer its current [output cut] tapering plan to allow for higher target productions for the countries with spare capacity, such as Saudi Arabia, UAE and Russia, to compensate for expected underperformance” from some regions such as West Africa, he said. Biden has blamed Russia and OPEC for surging U.S. gasoline prices, calling on the cartel and its allies to pump more oil. “The now open disagreement between OPEC and the U.S. administration, the threat of an SPR [Strategic Petroleum Reserve] release and the potential resumption in negotiations with Iran will…increase the volatility in oil prices in coming weeks, especially as trading liquidity falls into year-end,” said a team of analysts at Goldman Sachs led by Damien Courvalin, in a note dated Nov. 4. But they said even if the U.S. tapped its emergency oil supplies, such a move would be of “modest and temporary help and could in fact backfire given the structural nature of the oil market deficits starting in 2023.”

Data from Baker Hughes Friday showed the number of active U.S. oil drilling rigs climbed by six to 450 this week– the biggest increase since the week ended Oct. 15 — implying a future uptick in production.

The Goldman analysts told oil bulls to hold their ground, as the the oil market is under supplied and facing more volatility, at the end of a week that’s set to deliver the commodity’s worst losses since August. “Net, our bullish view remains unchanged: the oil deficit remains unresolved, the current strength in oil demand remains a near-term tailwind and the increasingly structural nature of the deficits will require much higher long-dated oil prices,” the analysts said.

Couravlin said the analysts’ favored bullish oil trade now is a long December 2022 contract, which offers “the best return vs. volatility trade off as perceived near-term bearish risks (COVID, OPEC, Iran, U.S. SPR) would only further delay the required ramp-up in investment and exacerbate the structural deficits that we forecast starting in 2023.” The bank has a $90-a-barrel end-2021 forecast for Brent crude.