Oil prices rise moderately on Thursday morning after rising to two-week highs the day before, provoked by the depreciation of the dollar and data on the reduction of gasoline inventories in the United States.
The price of December futures for Brent on London’s ICE Futures is $95.93 per barrel by 8:02 a.m., which is $0.24 (0.25%) higher than the closing price of the previous session. As a result of trading on Wednesday, these contracts rose by $2.17 (2.3%) to $95.69 per barrel.
The price of futures for WTI oil for December in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) is $88.1 per barrel by this time, which is $0.19 (0.22%) higher than the final value of the previous session. A day earlier, the contract rose in price by $2.59 (3%) to $87.91 per barrel.
As it became known on Wednesday from the report of the US Department of Energy, commercial oil reserves in the country increased by 2.59 million barrels last week, while experts polled by Bloomberg expected a more moderate increase – by 1.5 million barrels.
Inventories of gasoline decreased by 1.48 million barrels, while distillate reserves increased by 170 thousand barrels. Analysts predicted a decrease in gasoline stocks by 1.5 million barrels, distillates – by 1 million barrels.
“Drunken gasoline inventories suggest that the economy and driving may not be as bad as expected,” said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research.
Meanwhile, the ICE-calculated index, which shows the dynamics of the dollar against six major world currencies, fell 1.2% the day before. Wednesday’s rise in oil prices “was actually the result of the dollar’s decline,” Phil Flynn, senior analyst at The Price Futures Group, told MarketWatch.
