(New York) Oil prices stumbled again from their April highs on Tuesday before retreating, in a market that lacks certainty about the health of demand.
Published at 7:13 a.m.
Updated at 3:49 p.m.
The price of a barrel of North Sea Brent crude for delivery in September fell by 0.41% to close at $86.24.
Its American equivalent, the barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), with maturity in August, fell by 0.68% to 82.81 dollars.
Black gold had started the session with panache, stimulated, in particular, by the hurricane Berylwhich has just been reclassified as category 5, the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale used to assess the intensity of these climatic events.
After sweeping the Antilles, Beryl was heading toward Jamaica and could reach the southwest coast of Texas by Saturday, according to weather forecasts, where many oil terminals and refineries are located.
In the process, WTI came close to its April 26 peak of $84.46, but failed to surpass it, just as it did on Friday. It then fell back.
“We’re stuck in a corridor,” said Rob Haworth of US Bank Wealth Management. “It’s wide, but it’s a corridor.”
The cap is due to the possibility of increased production by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its OPEC+ allies starting in October, the analyst said.
The cartel announced in early June that it intended to gradually return to 2.2 million barrels per day of cuts, a decision taken unilaterally by several members, even though several ministers subsequently assured that the decision was not set in stone.
Commerzbank’s Carsten Fritsch pointed out that while OPEC had cut volumes in June compared to the previous month, it was still almost 500,000 barrels per day above its committed level.
This gap is mainly due to Iraq and the United Arab Emirates.
Another limit to the rise in prices is that “there are still concerns about global growth,” added Rob Haworth. Recent American indicators show a less buoyant economy, in which employment is deteriorating.
However, if the market looks at the United States and China, “it seems that the global economy is doing well in this context of high rates” and that there is no need to fear “significant destruction of demand”, argues the analyst.
