Brent ended up 3.13% at $96.59 and WTI ended up 2.71% at $90.50.
Oil prices followed a sharp second session higher on Thursday, boosted by opportunity buying, good news from US demand and some skepticism regarding the imminence of an Iranian nuclear deal.
The price of a barrel of Brent from the North Sea, for delivery in October, rose 3.13%, to close at 96.59 dollars.
The price of a barrel of American West Texas Intermediate (WTI), with maturity in September, gained 2.71%, to 90.50 dollars.
“We had a correction for a week and a half and yesterday’s report (on US stocks) was an opportunity to reset the counters,” said Stephen Schork, analyst and author of the Schork Report.
Speculators who had bet on the decline in black gold thus took some profits and other operators reengaged, following the barrel of WTI closed on Tuesday at its lowest level for almost 7 months, i.e. before the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
Commercial crude oil reserves in the United States shrunk by 7.1 million barrels last week, according to figures released Wednesday by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA), as analysts forecast a slight increase of 800,000 barrels.
US demand for petroleum products took off by nearly 9% over one week and is almost at the same level as last year at the same time.
For Edward Moya, of Oanda, the succession of robust macroeconomic indicators this week has also “boosted optimism vis-à-vis an acceleration in demand for crude”.
As for the offer, the market paid attention to the declarations of the new secretary general of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Kuwaiti Haitham Al-Ghais, according to whom the group does not exclude anything for its meeting of the 5 September, including a reduction in its production.
As for the negotiations on the Iranian nuclear, “the market had started to integrate the possibility of an agreement, but the lack of new information made the traders more skeptical”, noted, in a note, Bart Melek, of TD Securities.
The European Union and the United States have been studying, since Tuesday, Iran’s response to the document submitted by the EU, which is the subject of several reservations from the Islamic Republic. Nothing has leaked since.
“The next news” relating to these negotiations “will dictate the direction of oil prices”, according to Stephen Schork.
