(London) Oil prices picked up again on Wednesday, the day after a catastrophic session, driven by possible disruptions in the supply of black gold due to the temporary blockage of the Suez Canal.
Posted on March 24, 2021 at 8:18 am
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At around 6:55 a.m., a barrel of Brent from the North Sea for delivery in May was worth $ 61.98 in London, up 1.96% from the previous day’s close.
In New York, WTI’s US barrel for the same month gained 2.13% to $ 58.99.
Both contracts lost around 6% on Tuesday, having already fallen from that height last Thursday. At their lowest Tuesday at the end of the sessions, they had erased six weeks of increase.
But Wednesday oil “benefited from a respite thanks to information reporting that a ship had run aground and blocked the Suez Canal”, noted Jeffrey Halley, analyst for Oanda.
“The potential disruption of supplies” of black gold “drives up the prices of the two benchmark contracts”, he added.
A 400-meter container ship flying the Panamanian flag, the Ever Given, indeed blocked the Suez Canal, one of the busiest roads in the world, on Wednesday.
The vessel weighing more than 219,000 tonnes, which was heading to Rotterdam from Asia, is stationary after being blown off by a gust of wind, when it had just crossed the southern entrance to the Suez Canal , according to the Vesselfinder website.
Investors are also awaiting the next data on crude oil inventories in the United States, released by the United States Energy Information Agency (EIA) later today.
On Tuesday, the federation which brings together professionals in the petroleum sector in the United States, the American Petroleum Institute (API), estimates deemed less reliable, indicated that they had climbed by 2.93 million barrels in the country at the time of Last week.
“The Americans are pumping at full steam, because oil drilling has become a lucrative business again,” commented Naeem Aslam of Avatrade, which threatens the level of stocks if consumption does not pick up quickly enough.
“If EIA data confirms this trend, crude prices could start falling again,” he added.
According to the median of analysts polled by the Bloomberg agency, these stocks for the past week are expected to rise, but on a smaller scale, by 1.35 million barrels.
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