Oil prices fall on pipeline recovery prospects and weak demand

Los oil prices They registered their fifth consecutive day of low on Thursday, indifferent to the sanitary easing in China, the blockade of oil tankers in the Black Sea and the stoppage of an oil pipeline in North America.

the barrel of North Sea Brent for February delivery it lost 1.32% to $76.15 in London. During the day it touched its minimum of the year, at 75.74 dollars.

Meanwhile, the barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in January fell 0.76% to $71.46 in New York. The benchmark US range hit 71.12 slightly earlier, a floor from December 2021.

Los crude oil prices went up briefly after the announcement of the arrest of the oleoducto Keystone, which is carrying Canadian crude to the United States, due to a leak in Kansas. But the market went down again, with the WTI approaching the symbolic level of 70 dollars.

Health flexibility in China was met with skepticism by operators.

“When” cities subject, until now, to drastic measures are reopened, “that simply means that the virus is going to spread more quickly among the population,” argued Eli Rubin of EBW Analytics Group.

With a large part of the population unvaccinated and vaccines with significantly less efficacy than their Western equivalents, “there is a significant risk that the world’s largest oil importer will see its health system overwhelmed” by new cases of coronavirus, the analyst estimates.

The market seems to pay little attention to the blockade of tankers loaded with Russian oil in the Bosphorus area.

The Turkish authorities demand from the shipping companies an insurance certificate that will serve even in the event of violation of the capping mechanism on the price of Russian crude oil, a document that the insurers refuse to issue.

For Oanda’s Edward Moya, it is a temporary shock “that does not change the fact that the prospects for crude oil demand continue to deteriorate.”

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