(London) Oil prices were at their highest level since November on Wednesday, driven by market fears of a major crude shortage for the fourth quarter following the publication of monthly reports from the IEA and OPEC.
Around 5:20 a.m. ET (11:20 a.m. Paris), a barrel of North Sea Brent, for delivery in November, was up 0.49% at $92.51, after peaking at $92. .84 dollars.
Its American equivalent, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), for delivery in October, gained 0.52% to 89.30 dollars, after having touched 89.64 dollars.
The two black gold benchmarks are at their highest level since November.
“The price of oil is pushed up by the persistence of insufficient supply on the market during the third and fourth quarters,” explain DNB analysts.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts a “significant supply shortage” of oil in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to its monthly report released on Wednesday.
Last week, Saudi Arabia and Russia, the two heavyweights of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies (OPEC), announced the extension of their cuts in production and crude exports until the end of the year.
These cuts are expected to result in “a substantial deficit” of one million barrels per day for OPEC countries, “increasing the risk” of “volatility” in the markets, the IEA said.
In its monthly report released Tuesday, OPEC estimated that in the fourth quarter, demand could exceed crude supply by 3.3 million barrels if OPEC’s “potential production (maintains) 27, 5 million barrels per day,” its August level, notes Tamas Varga of PVM Energy.
“A daily stock depletion of more than 3 million barrels per day, if true, represents the largest global supply deficit in 16 years,” the analyst points out.
For now, this “expected shortage” is determining market sentiment and pushing prices higher, Varga notes, offsetting concerns about the health of the global economy and the level of demand.
Investors are now awaiting the release of the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) weekly U.S. commercial inventory report for the week ended September 8.
The sector’s federation, the American Petroleum Institute (API), estimated Tuesday that crude stocks increased by about 1.17 million barrels last week, and gasoline stocks by 4.2 million barrels last week. million barrels. However, API data are considered less reliable than those of the EIA.
Analysts, for their part, expect a drop of 2.481 million barrels in commercial crude reserves, and a drop of 850,000 barrels of gasoline, according to the median consensus compiled by Bloomberg.