(New York) Crude prices ended lower on Wednesday but pared losses after weekly U.S. crude inventories dwindled.
A barrel of Brent from the North Sea, for delivery in October, fell 0.97% to 83.21 dollars.
Its American equivalent, the barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), for delivery the same month, of which it is the first day of use as a reference contract, fell 0.94% to 78.89 dollars.
Earlier Brent lost 1.59% and WTI 1.63% as prices were depressed by disappointing PMI economic indicators in many oil-consuming countries.
In France, Germany in the euro zone, but also in the United Kingdom, the PMI indicators are all “in contraction and figures below expectations will again sound warnings of a drop in demand for oil”, underlined John Evans, analyst at PVM Energy.
The downturn in private sector activity in the euro zone indeed worsened in August, with the poor health of the manufacturing industry now affecting service companies. In the United Kingdom, the economy suffered its strongest contraction in August since the beginning of 2021, when the country was in confinement.
In the United States, the Flash PMI index showed that activity was close to stagnation at 50.4 points against 52 in July, worse than expectations.
“Rising concerns about the state of the Chinese economy, combined with expectations of further interest rate hikes in the United States” are also weighing on prices, analysts at Energi Danmark note.
In good news for brokers, however, weekly U.S. crude oil trading supplies fell sharply again last week, more than analysts expected, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). ).
These crude inventories fell by 6.1 million barrels while analysts expected a smaller decrease of 3 million.
“Continued strength in refining activity and crude exports supported a sharp decline in oil inventories,” commented Matt Smith of Kpler.
This slowed down the decline in prices.
On the natural gas side, the Dutch TTF futures contract, considered the European benchmark, fell more than 14% to 36.55 euros per megawatt hour (MWh).
On Wednesday, the Australian giant Woodside is meeting with gas workers’ unions for a bargaining meeting on wage levels.
This weekend, union members at Woodside’s North West Shelf project voted unanimously to go on strike if their demands were not met.
The affected Australian facilities alone supply more than 10% of the world’s LNG (liquefied gas) supply each month.