Thursday morning in Asia, oil prices were mostly the same as they had been the day before. Traders were weighing how optimistic they were about China’s demand and how likely it was that global central banks would raise interest rates again.
At 01:21 GMT, Brent crude futures went up 1 cent to $82.71 per barrel, while U.S. crude futures went down 4 cents to $77.24 per barrel.
The market was helped by the International Energy Agency’s prediction that Chinese oil demand will rise again in 2023 after falling by 400,000 bpd in 2022. The agency now thinks that oil demand will grow by 1.7 million bpd by 2023, bringing the total to 101.6 million bpd.
Related: After the price ceiling on Russian crude and the OPEC+ summit, oil prices rose sharply.
Data shows that both road and air traffic in China have risen sharply in the past month.
Oil prices have also been helped by the fact that TC Energy Corp.’s Keystone Pipeline, which normally sends 620,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Canada to the U.S., has been down for a while.
Officials said it would take at least a few weeks to clean up the leak that caused the power outage.
On Wednesday, the US Federal Reserve raised its overnight interest rate by 50 basis points, which is less than the 75 basis point increases it made at its last four policy meetings. The central bank gave signs that interest rates would go up again.
Last week, U.S. crude oil stockpiles grew by more than 10 million barrels, which is the most since March 2021. This was because the Strategic Petroleum Reserve released oil and refiners cut back on their work, which caused the stockpiles to grow.