Brent ended on a rebound of 3.93% to 104.65 dollars and WTI ended on a climb of 4.26%, to 102.73 dollars.
Oil prices rebounded on Thursday following a correction on Tuesday and Wednesday, as operators for a time forgot the specter of recession to focus once more on the vagaries of supply.
A barrel of Brent North Sea crude for September delivery gained 3.93%, to close at $104.65. He had taken up almost 6% in session.
The barrel of American West Texas Intermediate (WTI), with maturity in August, climbed 4.26%, to 102.73 dollars, once more firmly above the threshold of 100 dollars, which it had pressed on Tuesday for the first time in almost two months.
“Traders are taking precautions and being wary of possible supply disruptions,” said Andrew Lebow of Commodity Research Group, “particularly if the CPC pipeline closes. It would be huge.”
Referring to the violation of environmental standards, a Russian court on Tuesday ordered a 30-day halt to oil deliveries by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which normally transports more than a million barrels of oil. Kazakhs per day to the Russian terminal in Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea.
The consortium appealed the decision, which suspended its execution.
The market is also worried regarding an even greater reduction in Russian gas supplies to Europe. On Thursday, the price of Dutch TTF, the benchmark for natural gas in Europe, jumped another 7.8%, the highest since early March, to 184.5 euros per megawatt hour.
For Stephen Schork, analyst and author of the Schork Report, the correction of the last few days “has been a bit excessive”. For him, the refrain taken up in chorus by the market for several weeks as to the imminence of a recession was justified only by “conjectures”. “There was no new information.”
“And now the focus is back on the offer,” he announces.
The inflection in prices was also favored by the weekly report from the US Energy Information Agency (EIA).
The document reported a surprise rise in commercial crude inventories in the United States, which rose by 8.2 million barrels last week while analysts expected a drop of 1.55 million, information of a nature to lower prices.
But the report also showed a drop in stocks of gasoline, diesel and kerosene, as well as a jump in demand for these three fuel varieties, which gave the general impression of a still tight market. .
The price volatility that allows such a marked rebound following a fall on Tuesday is, in part, due to the lack of liquidity, explained Andrew Lebow, “because many operators are standing on the sidelines” of the market.
“Look at the rough. Down 10%, up 6%, you can’t take a position on this market,” argued the analyst. “The best you can do is day-to-day operations.”
