Crude oil continued to drop Thursday despite easing political tensions. A rising number of COVID-19 cases in China contributed to the fall in demand for fuel from the world’s largest crude importer.
Brent crude futures traded at $92.61 at 12:18 pm GST Thursday. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was $85.16 at 12:19 pm
GMT. Prices for Brent and US WTI had also dropped a day earlier on reports of Russian oil shipments to Hungary resuming over the Druzhba line.
On Wednesday, there were media reports about a possible Russian missile attack on Poland. “Our preliminary analysis suggests that the incident was likely caused by the Ukrainian air defense missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory against Russian cruise
missile attacks,” NATO Secretary General Jen Stoltenberg told journalists. Stoltenberg added that there is no indication that Russia was planning to attack NATO countries, which was intended to diffuse escalating tensions. Crude to dip further next year The International Energy Agency (IEA), in its November 2022 Oil Market report, expects demand for oil to slow to 1.6 million
barrels per day (mbd) in 2023, down from 2.1 mbd in 2022. The global economic growth outlook was also worse, and the last
quarter of 2022 will have a more contracted use of oil compared to the same period a year earlier. China’s weak economy, Europe’s energy, political crisis, and the strong US dollar are all factors at play.
As per the latest Energy Information Administration (EIA) report released on November 11, US crude oil inventories fell by 5.4
million barrels, compared with market expectations of a marginal 0.44 million-barrel drop. Crude stocks at Cushing, Oklahoma,
went down by 1.62 million barrels, following a 0.923 million draw.
