Crude oil prices continued to rise. They reacted to the results of the meeting of OPEC and OPEC+. In addition, fears that the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the West against Russia would affect energy exports to the market also continued.
Oil prices were also not affected by the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) decision to withdraw 60 million barrels of oil from its reserves to curb the rise in oil prices.
At 6:28 a.m. in Asia ET, WTI crude futures were 0.46% higher at $111.11 a barrel.
Brent crude futures were up 1.32% at $114.42 a barrel.
OPEC+ ended its meeting today and decided to stick to the original agreement. It will increase oil production for the month of April by only 400,000 barrels per day.
Meanwhile, the IEA has decided to withdraw 60 million barrels of oil from its reserves to slow the rise in oil prices.
The IEA held an emergency meeting yesterday to discuss how to reduce oil prices, which have exceeded $100 per barrel in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine.
In the U.S., the EIA reported the change in crude oil inventories last week. Accordingly, inventories unexpectedly fell by 2.597 million barrels last week. An increase of more than 2 million barrels was expected, as inventories had risen sharply by 4.5 million barrels the previous week. However, the data is consistent with the data released by the API, which showed that crude oil inventories decreased by 6.1 million barrels.