London (awp / afp) – Oil prices lost ground on Tuesday, despite the Russian production cut expected in March, after the announcement of a sale of part of the strategic oil reserves of the United States, while the price of natural gas continued to fall.
Around 11:15 GMT (12:15 CET), a barrel of Brent from the North Sea for delivery in April lost 1.24% to 85.54 dollars.
Its American equivalent, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in March, fell 1.56% to 78.89 dollars.
The Biden administration said on Monday it was selling 26 million barrels of crude oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), “mandated by Congress, over a three-month period beginning in April, to generate revenue,” said Tamas Varga, an analyst at PVM Energy.
The “downward impact on prices” of this new release of part of the country’s strategic oil reserves “will not be prolonged”, however tempers Tamas Varga.
Russia’s announcement last week of a March production cut of 500,000 barrels per day in response to Western sanctions is still putting upward pressure on prices.
And “a tsunami of data to come will greatly influence risk appetite in the immediate future,” he continues.
Investors are indeed waiting for key US inflation data on Tuesday to get new clues on the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) monetary policy.
Meanwhile, monthly reports from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) due Tuesday and Wednesday “will provide insight into whether the apparent deterioration in economic conditions will have a significant impact on global oil demand and, therefore, on the oil balance,” Varga continued.
On the natural gas side, the Dutch TTF futures contract, considered the European benchmark, traded at 54.81 euros per megawatt hour (MWh), after reaching 51.36 euros the day before, its lowest for almost 18 months. .
Gas prices have fallen more than 30% since the start of the year and more than 80% since the peak in August 2022, caused by an interruption in the delivery of gas from Russia via the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline. .
For analysts at Energi Danmark, “the European weather outlook has become generally milder and more humid”, lowering the gas consumption of individuals.
The drop in demand “combined with the resumption of exploitation of the Norwegian Troll gas field after an unplanned shutdown has led to lower prices on the European gas market”, continue the analysts.
The Troll field, operated by Equinor, is indeed the cornerstone of Norwegian gas production, containing around 40% of the total gas reserves on the Norwegian continental shelf.
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