Oil prices climbed for a fourth straight day on Thursday with U.S. crude, heating oil and jet fuel stocks growing tighter just as a wintry blast hits the United States and travel is set to soar for its holiday season.<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures gained 44 cents, or 0.54%, to $82.64 at 0422 GMT, extending gains of around 2.7% from the previous session. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose 49 cents, or 0.63%, to $78.78 a barrel.<\/p>\n
Both benchmark contracts jumped on Wednesday after government data showed U.S. crude inventories fell by much more than analysts had expected, posting a drop of 5.89 million barrels for the week ending on Dec. 16. [EIA\/S]<\/p>\n
Distillate stocks, which include heating oil and jet fuel, also declined, going against expectations for a build.<\/p>\n
The falling stockpiles come as demand for heating oil is set to soar with a powerful winter storm hitting the United States, with sub-zero wind chills expected as far south as Texas and record-breaking lows forecast for Florida and eastern states.<\/p>\n
Jet fuel consumption is also expected to pick up with a post-COVID boom in travel for the end-of-year holiday season.<\/p>\n
“On our numbers … the crude market is finely balanced,” said Baden Moore, National Australia Bank’s head of commodity research.<\/p>\n
“As we look into 2023, we see China’s re-opening and a likely continued steady roll-up in global jet demand (towards 2019 levels) will tighten global crude markets and drive prices higher,” he said.<\/p>\n
Demand worries, however, stemming from China’s COVID-19 surge and fears of a global recession may keep oil futures in check.<\/p>\n
“The gains look exaggerated, even with the unexpected draw in U.S. inventories,” said Vandana Hari, founder of oil market analysis provider Vanda Insights.<\/p>\n
“The bearishness of demand worries is likely to prevail over any short-term props,” she said.<\/p>\n
China may be struggling to keep an accurate count of COVID infections as it experiences a big spike in cases, a senior World Health Organization official said on Wednesday, amid concerns about a lack of data from the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices climbed for a fourth straight day on Thursday with U.S. crude, heating oil and jet fuel stocks growing tighter just as a wintry blast hits the United States and travel is set to soar for its holiday season. Brent crude futures gained 44 cents, or 0.54%, to $82.64 at 0422 GMT, extending gains of around 2.7% from the previous session. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose 49 cents, or 0.63%, to $78.78 a barrel. Both benchmark contracts jumped on Wednesday after government data showed U.S. crude inventories fell by much more than analysts had expected, posting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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-544496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544496","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}