Oil prices climbed over 1% on Wednesday, after an industry report showed U.S. crude inventories have fallen more than expected, while hopes of an effective COVID-19 vaccine continued to bolster sentiment.<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures were up 48 cents, or 1.1% to $44.09 a barrel at 0445 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures also rose 48 cents, or 1.2%, to $41.84 a barrel. Both benchmarks gained nearly 3% on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Crude stockpiles fell by 5.1 million barrels last week to about 482 million barrels, industry group data showed on Tuesday, compared with analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll for a reduction of 913,000 barrels.<\/p>\n
“Defying analysts’ expectations again, the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported on Tuesday a significant ‘draw’ in crude oil inventories,” said Stephen Innes, chief market strategist at AXI.<\/p>\n
Oil prices also “continue to revel on the back of Pfizer’s vaccine announcement,” Innes said.<\/p>\n
Both Brent and U.S. oil prices are up more than 10% this week since initial trials data showed the experimental COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Pfizer Inc and Germany’s BioNTech was 90% effective.<\/p>\n
Although oil prices are supported by the positive news on vaccine, overall fuel demand outlook remains clouded amid re-imposed coronavirus restrictions in Europe and United States.<\/p>\n
“Near-term demand prospects remain weak – particularly given a range of European countries implemented COVID-19 restrictions (albeit to varying degrees) which will negatively impact consumption,” analysts at National Australia Bank said in a note on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“Beyond these measures, demand will take a considerable time to recover – as international travel remains constrained.”<\/p>\n
Renewed restrictions in Europe and the United States to combat the coronavirus have slowed the pace of fuel demand recovery, offsetting a rebound in Asian economies where consumption has almost returned to pre-COVID levels.<\/p>\n
“I believe the market will look for evidence of demand recovery before prices really kick up seriously higher,” said Sukrit Vijayakar, director of energy consultancy Trifecta.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices climbed over 1% on Wednesday, after an industry report showed U.S. crude inventories have fallen more than expected, while hopes of an effective COVID-19 vaccine continued to bolster sentiment. Brent crude futures were up 48 cents, or 1.1% to $44.09 a barrel at 0445 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures also rose 48 cents, or 1.2%, to $41.84 a barrel. Both benchmarks gained nearly 3% on Tuesday. Crude stockpiles fell by 5.1 million barrels last week to about 482 million barrels, industry group data showed on Tuesday, compared with analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}