Brent crude futures rose 3 cents to $93.20 a barrel.
SINGAPORE In early trading on Wednesday, oil prices went up a little bit because OPEC stuck to its predictions of strong growth in fuel demand around the world. This eased worries that the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rates again next week because consumer prices went up unexpectedly in August.
By 01:16 GMT, Brent crude futures had gone up 3 cents to $93.20 per barrel. On Tuesday, they had gone down 0.9%. The price of a barrel of U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude oil went up by 10 cents, or 0.1%, to $87.41.
On Tuesday, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) reaffirmed its predictions that global oil demand will grow in 2022 and 2023. They did this by pointing to signs that major economies were doing better than expected, even though there were problems like rising inflation.
Related: Oil prices go down because China is putting limits on COVID and because interest rates might go up.
OPEC said in a monthly report that oil demand will rise by 3.1 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2022 and by 2.7 million bpd in 2023. This is the same as what it said last month.
Tina Teng, an analyst at CMC Markets, said that the steady changes in oil prices show that undersupply is still a major problem in the physical markets. This is especially true since OPEC maintained its positive demand outlook on Tuesday.
Lower market expectations for a revival of the 2015 nuclear deal between the West and Iran have, according to ANZ Research analysts, helped oil prices. There were also reports that the U.S. Biden administration was thinking about refilling its strategic oil reserve.
But a hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation report on Tuesday weighed on oil and financial markets. This dashed hopes that the Fed might ease up on rate hikes in the coming months. go to site
Fed officials will meet on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. Inflation is still way above the 2% goal set by the U.S. central bank.
Things are still hard in China. Limits on COVID-19 are making it harder for the country that imports the most oil to buy fuel. go to site
“China’s zero-COVID policy is still in place,” said Edward Moya, a senior market analyst at OANDA, in a note. “This will keep any bounces that happen in the next few weeks from getting too big.”
“The U.S. is the biggest unknown, and if the outlook for demand there weakens, oil prices could go back down the way they’ve been going since the beginning of summer.”
Related: Oil prices rose on the likelihood of OPEC production cuts and rising demand.
On the supply side, U.S. crude stocks grew by about 6 million barrels in the week ending September 9, market sources said Wednesday, citing data from the American Petroleum Institute.
Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. EDT (14:30 GMT), the U.S. government will make inventory data public.
