The price of Texas intermediate oil (WTI) fell 4.71% this Wednesday and stood at US$96.23 a barrel, falling back below the psychological barrier of US$100, after the announcement by the International Energy Agency ( IEA) that it will release 120 million barrels of its reserves.
According to data at the end of operations on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex), WTI futures contracts for delivery in May lost US$5.73 compared to the previous close.
The price of Texas crude started the day higher, with investors once again concerned about the consequences that sanctions against Russia could have on oil supply.
However, information about the IEA’s plans and new data on an unexpected increase in oil supply in the United States turned the balance and it was at its lowest price in three weeks.
The member countries of the IEA will soon release 120 million barrels of crude oil from their strategic reserves, of which 60 million are from the United States.
The director of the IEA, Fatih Birol, made this announcement today, although he specified that other specific details about the figures for each country will be communicated later.
The announcement follows the decision advanced last Friday by the IEA to release more crude from its strategic reserves to combat price volatility in the oil market caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, although it did not detail the volume at the time.
Just one day earlier, US President Joe Biden ordered the release of a record amount of his country’s strategic oil reserves (one million barrels a day for the next six months).
The IEA had already agreed on March 1, a week after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to release 60 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserves of its members around the world, a figure that finally amounted to 62.7 million.
Natural gas contracts for May delivery fell less than a cent to $6.02 per thousand cubic feet, and gasoline contracts due the same month fell eleven cents to $3.04 a gallon.
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