Oil prices extended early gains to rise around 1 per cent on Wednesday, on optimism that the lifting of China’s strict COVID-19 curbs will lead to a recovery in fuel demand in the world’s top oil importer.<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures climbed 76 cents, or 0.88 per cent, to $86.68 a barrel by 0721 GMT, following a 1.7 per cent rally in the previous session.<\/p>\n
US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures went up 85 cents, or 1.06 per cent, to $81.03, having risen 0.4 per cent on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Both crude futures surged by more than $1 a barrel to hit fresh 2023 highs around midday in Asia, with Brent reaching $87 a barrel and WTI futures hitting $81.42 a barrel.<\/p>\n
China’s economic growth slowed sharply to 3 per cent in 2022, missing the official target of “around 5.5 per cent” and marking its second-worst performance since 1976. But the data still beatanalysts’ forecasts after China started rolling back its zero-COVID policy in early December. Analysts polled by Reuters see 2023 growth rebounding to 4.9 per cent.<\/p>\n
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said in a monthly report that Chinese oil demand would grow 510,000 barrels per day (bpd) this year after contracting for the first time in years in 2022 due to COVID containment measures.<\/p>\n
But OPEC kept its 2023 global demand growth forecast unchanged at 2.22 million bpd.<\/p>\n
“Growing hopes that China’s fuel demand will pick up after a recent shift in its COVID-19 policy lent support to oil prices,” said Toshitaka Tazawa, an analyst at Fujitomi Securities Co Ltd.<\/p>\n
“OPEC’s optimistic outlook on China’s demand also supported the market sentiment,” he said, predicting a bullish tone for this week.<\/p>\n
The market was also supported by expectations of a drawdown in US crude stocks by around 1.8 million barrels despite higher oil product inventories, according to a Reuters poll.<\/p>\n
On the supply-side, oil output from top shale regions in the United States is due to rise by about 77,300 bpd to a record 9.38 million bpd in February, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a productivity report on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Russia, meanwhile, expects Western sanctions to have a significant impact on its oil product exports and its production, likely leaving it with more crude oil to sell, said a senior Russian source with knowledge of the nation’s outlook.<\/p>\n
The market is also closely watching for more demand data from China in the International Energy Agency’s monthly report due later on Wednesday, according to ING analysts in a client note.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices extended early gains to rise around 1 per cent on Wednesday, on optimism that the lifting of China’s strict COVID-19 curbs will lead to a recovery in fuel demand in the world’s top oil importer. Brent crude futures climbed 76 cents, or 0.88 per cent, to $86.68 a barrel by 0721 GMT, following a 1.7 per cent rally in the previous session. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures went up 85 cents, or 1.06 per cent, to $81.03, having risen 0.4 per cent on Tuesday. Both crude futures surged by more than $1 a barrel to hit […]<\/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-548322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548322","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=548322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}