Benchmark oil prices go down

On Thursday, oil prices went down due to expectations of a decrease in demand amid the high COVID-19 cases and the current restrictive measures, Interfax reports.

Worsening demand forecasts levels the support provided to the market by the data on reducing oil stocks in the USA published yesterday.

The cost of March futures for Brent on the London stock exchange ICE Futures by 8:15 a.m. on January 28 was $55.45 per barrel, which is $0.36 (0.65%) below the price at the end of the previous session. As a result of trading on January 27, these contracts fell by $0.1 (0.2%) to $55.81 per barrel.

The price of March futures for WTI in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) by this time dropped to $52.53 per barrel, which is $0.32 (0.61%) below the level of the previous session on Wednesday. The day before, futures rose in price by $0.24 (0.5%) up to $52.85 per barrel.

“There are still a lot of concerns about the demand outlook,” said Andrew Lebow, senior partner at Commodity Research Group. “Chinese authorities are urging their citizens to stop travelling during the Lunar New Year, which is the busiest tourist season of the year. Of course, this will affect the level of demand.”

An additional signal of a potential decline in demand was also a sharp drop in traffic in Los Angeles over the past month due to restrictions in force in California.

As reported, Biden plans to restrict oil drilling on the federal states of the United States.

Tags: oil, USA, Asia, coronavirus, price, quarantine, Brent, WTI, oil reserves, economy, oil market

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