He price of the Texas intermediate oil (WTI) Opened this Friday with a rise of 0.69%, up to $76.40 a barrel, thus breaking with the drop in prices seen in the last two sessions. At 9:00 a.m. local time (14:00 GMT), WTI futures contracts for March delivery were up $0.52 compared to the previous day’s close.
Tom Essaye, in today’s report from The Sevens Report, points out that “persistent concerns about the state of the global economy” and that the latest data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) have affected the price of crude oil downwards. On Wednesday, the EIA reported that US crude inventories rose by 4.1 million barrels during the week ending January 27.
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This was the sixth consecutive week of increases in EIA inventories. In addition, on Wednesday, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies, led by Russia, decided to keep their production rate set last October unchanged for all of 2023.
For its part, the US central bank further eased its interest rate hikes yesterday, rising by a quarter of a percentage point, just as experts had predicted. While today both the Bank of England and the European Central Bank raised their interest rate by half a point.
The reopening of China, a large consumer of crude oil, this January encouraged investors. However, now the market expects to see an increase in demand for black gold from China in its next economic reports.
