Oil prices are rising Wednesday on signals of declining U.S. inventories, continuing a rebound that began after an unexpected production cut by a number of OPEC+ countries last Sunday.
American Petroleum Institute (API) data released Tuesday night showed a 4.35 million-barrel decline in U.S. oil inventories for the week ending March 31.
The official data on U.S. energy stocks for the previous week will be published by the U.S. Department of Energy on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. The previous week the country’s oil reserves decreased by 7.49 million barrels.
June Brent crude futures on London’s ICE Futures exchange stood at $85.36 a barrel by 8:05 a.m. Wednesday, up $0.42 (0.49%) from the previous session’s closing price. Those contracts rose $0.01 to $84.94 a barrel on Tuesday.
The price of WTI futures for May oil grew by $0.36 (0.45%) up to $81.07 per barrel at electronic trades of NYMEX by that time. At the end of previous session the cost of contracts grew by $0.29 (0.4%) to $80.71 per barrel, the highest since January 26.
Oil prices rose nearly 7% during the first two sessions of the week. On Sunday evening, nine of the 20 OPEC+ countries announced voluntary production cuts from May to the end of the year, in addition to the commitments they had made at last October’s meeting to adjust oil production (a total reduction of 2 mln bpd to August 2022 levels).
Additional voluntary production adjustments by OPEC+ countries will total 1.66 mln bpd.
The unexpected decision of a number of OPEC+ states led to the revision of forecasts for oil prices by a number of experts and caused a new wave of concerns about inflation, Bloomberg notes.
