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Oil prices rose on Thursday, supported by an unexpected drop in gasoline reserves in USA, although the supply of crude oil remains high. The US light WTI crude oil rose by 0.71% to 52.71 USD per barrel, while the European benchmark Brent oil recorded a growth of 0.65% to 55.48 USD per barrel.

The data of Energy Information Administration in USA reported that gasoline stocks decreased by 0.869 million barrels last week to 256.2 million barrels, which the forecasts were for growth of 1.1 million barrels. The crude oil reserves grew by 13.8 million barrels to 508.6 million barrels in the week ended February 3.

Investment bank Goldman Sachs said that high reserves and growing production in the US mean that the oil market will remain saturated for a while. According to them the surplus in the oil market in the fourth quarter of 2016 led to a further increase in reserves in January. The yield of the US also recover more quickly, and we think that the faster recovery of shale production creates risks for our forecast for the price of WTI of around 55 USD per barrel in 2018, but not to expectations that the global oil market will account deficit in the first half of 2017.

The high reserves are undermining the efforts of OPEC and other producers outside the cartel to reduce production by a total of 1.8 million barrels per day in the first half to boost prices and balance markets.

Since the beginning of January WTI and Brent fell by about 5%, despite of the OPEC deal.

