As Libya’s largest oil field recently resumed production, international oil prices fell on Tuesday (23rd), falling from a nearly one-month high at the previous day’s closing price.
Traders continued to focus on ongoing tensions in the Middle East and oil production disruptions in the U.S. state of North Dakota due to weather-related issues.
energy commodity prices
- West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures for March delivery fell 39 cents, or 0.5%, to $74.37 a barrel.
- Delivered in MarchBrent crude oil (Brent) futures fell 51 cents, or 0.6%, to $79.55 a barrel.
- Gasoline futures for February delivery fell 1.2% to settle at $2.21 a gallon.
- Delivered in FebruaryThermal Fuel FuturesPrices fell nearly 0.1% to settle at $2.69 per gallon.
- Natural gas futures for February delivery rose 1.3% to settle at $2.45 per million Btu.
market drivers
Oil prices ended lower on Tuesday, giving back some of Monday’s gains. XS.com market analyst Rania Gule said the fall in prices was due to the lack of new developments in the Red Sea situation and the resumption of production at Libya’s largest oil field.
Libya’s largest oil field, Sharara, has resumed production of up to 300,000 barrels per day after being shut down for two weeks due to protests.
In recent months, Brent and WTI crude oilFutures hit their highest closing price since December 26 on Monday. Commerzbank commodities analyst Carsten Fritsch pointed out that oil prices were boosted on Monday not only because of the continued tension in the Middle East that posed a threat to supply, but also because Ukrainian drones attacked Russian Baltic ports (Russia Oil export ports) are also causing concern.
He pointed out that oil production in North Dakota in the United States has been reduced due to severe cold temperatures, and it may take several weeks to fully recover. Last week, production losses were as high as 700,000 barrels per day.
Tyler Richey, co-editor of Sevens Report Research, said: “Fundamentally speaking, threats to supply have been intensifying in the months since the outbreak of the Israel-Kazakhstan war, but concerns about weakening demand kept oil prices low for much of the fourth quarter. It has remained near the lower end of its 2023 trading range.”
He said oil market dynamics had changed last week as cold weather late last week disrupted “much of North Dakota’s oil production, and an apparent Ukrainian drone attack on Russian fuel exports caused the facility to suspend operations starting this week.” , these news tilt the fundamentals, which is beneficial to the bulls in the short term.”
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) will release oil supply data on Wednesday. According to a survey by S&P Global Commodity Insights, analysts on average expected that U.S. commercial crude oil supply would decrease by 3 million barrels last week (ending January 19) to 427 million barrels, the lowest supply in the past three months.
In addition, they also expect US gasoline inventories to increase by 1 million barrels last week, while distillate inventories will decrease slightly by 81,000 barrels.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) announced on Tuesday night that U.S. crude oil inventories increased by about 6.7 million barrels last week, gasoline inventories increased by 7.2 million barrels, while distillate inventories fell by 245,000 barrels.
2024-01-23 22:00:57
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