New York. The price of Texas intermediate oil (WTI) closed this Wednesday with a fall of 5.7%, to 81.94 dollars a barrel, its lowest price since January, due to investor concerns about a possible recession, restrictions in China due to covid-19 and a stronger dollar.
At the end of operations on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex), WTI futures contracts for delivery in October lost 4.94 dollars compared to the previous close.
According to the specialized website Market Watch, such a low price for US reference oil has not been recorded since last January 11.
“It appears that the risk of losing Russian energy supplies is no longer supporting oil prices and that has caused energy investors to obsess solely with demand-side drivers,” the Oanda expert wrote today. Ed Moya.
For Moya, the fall is also linked to recent trade data from China and the United States, which point to a “drastic” drop in demand.
According to data offered today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), imports into the US in July fell 2.9% compared to June and reached 329.9 billion dollars, a figure that reflects the trend towards moderation of consumption, which had skyrocketed during the first months of 2022 due to the economic recovery.
Likewise, the strengthening of the dollar has made purchases from the North American country less attractive and exports of US goods fell 300 million to 183,000 million.
October natural gas futures contracts fell 30 cents to $7.84, and gasoline futures due the same month shed 10 cents to $2.30 a gallon.