Oil prices are falling moderately on Wednesday morning after a rise in the previous session, during which quotations renewed a three-week low.
The value of January futures for Brent on London’s ICE Futures Exchange stood at $93.28 a barrel by 7:08 a.m., down $0.58 (0.62%) from the close of the previous session. Those contracts rose $0.72 (0.8%) to $91.53 per barrel at the close of trading on Tuesday.
The price of WTI futures for December at electronic trades of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) is $86.2 per barrel by that time which is $0.72 (0.83%) lower than the final value of the previous session. The day before contract rose by $1.05 (1.2%) to $86.92 per barrel.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) on Tuesday raised its forecast for oil demand growth by 180,000 bpd in 2022, but the forecast for 2023 was lowered by 40,000 bpd.
The agency also noted that by December 5, when the European embargo on Russian oil imports takes effect, Russia will need to divert another 1.1 million b/d to exports to other countries.
Oil also reacted to news about a rocket explosion in Poland, which killed two people. A number of media wrote that the missile could have come from Russian territory, but the Russian Defense Ministry denied that it was Russian missiles, noting that the military did not strike targets near the Ukrainian-Polish border.
Also, the market is waiting for the weekly U.S. fuel inventories data, which will be published at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.
The American Petroleum Institute’s (API) report, released the previous evening, showed a 5.8 mln barrel drop in crude stocks last week. Gasoline stocks, according to API data, grew by 1.7 mln barrels, distillates – by 850,000 barrels.
