Around 11:40 a.m., Brent gained 0.90% to $81.41. Its American equivalent, the barrel of West Texas Intermediate, took 1.02%, to 76.16 dollars.
Oil prices were up slightly on Wednesday following jumping the day before, driven by uncertainties over the impact of a pipeline leak, before the publication of the state of US crude reserves.
Around 10:40 a.m. GMT (11:40 a.m. CET), a barrel of Brent North Sea oil for February delivery gained 0.90% to $81.41.
Its American equivalent, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), for delivery in January, took 1.02%, to 76.16 dollars.
Energi Danmark analysts attribute the slight rise in prices on Wednesday to the shutdown of the Keystone oil pipeline between Canada and the United States following a leak in the American state of Kansas, “causing some uncertainty regarding the ‘short-term offer’.
On Tuesday, the Canadian company TC Energy, which operates the pipeline, said in a press release that it was continuing its efforts “to recover oil at the site of the incident”, specifying that the investigation into the cause of the leak is in progress. Classes.
“Attention will now turn to the consequences for US oil stocks,” said Stephen Brennock, analyst at PVM Energy.
The federation of professionals in the sector, the American Petroleum Institute (API), estimated Tuesday evening that crude stocks rose by around 7.8 million barrels last week, and those of gasoline by 877,000 barrels.
The market is now waiting for the publication of the state of American stocks by the American Energy Information Agency (EIA), deemed more reliable than the API.
Analysts meanwhile expect a 3.5 million barrel decline in commercial crude reserves, but an increase of 2.5 million barrels for gasoline, according to the median of a consensus compiled by Bloomberg.
In addition, “fears of a global recession are still holding back” prices, say analysts at Energi Danmark.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) maintained its forecast for demand growth for 2022 and 2023, in a monthly report published on Tuesday.
But in detail, the alliance however lowered its global demand projections for the fourth quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, in a context of “reduced mobility and a slowdown in industrial activity in China”.
