Oil contracts rise as US reserves fall International and Materials

Brent crude for February was up 0.36% at $ 79.23 a barrel at ICE in London, up 0.76% at $ 76.56 a barrel on the WTI New York Commodity Exchange. The DXY dollar index, which generally has a negative correlation with the commodity, recently fell 0.29% to 95.921 points.

U.S. oil reserves fell 3.576 million barrels last week to 419.995 million units, beating The Wall Street Journal’s expectations of a decline of 3.2 million barrels during the period. Petrol stocks also fell, falling by 1.459 million barrels, up 200 thousand units, contrary to expectations.

However, energy price gains are being hampered by anxiety over the number of infections caused by the new variant of the corona virus. In the last 24 hours, 1.44 million cases were reported worldwide, a new record for the epidemic. There were 180,000 cases in France alone, reaching a total of 265,000 in the United States.

Over the past few days, global stock markets have been buoyed by signs that Omigron will not cause as severe a wave as the previous waves of the Covit-19, which spurred to set a new record in the S&P 500 Monday-market in New York. The rally of stocks has shown signs of fatigue, however, and there are no catalysts to trigger further gains.

“There is an element of positivity. The data continue to show that the disease caused by Omigrans is less severe than previous variants,” said James Atte, Abrdn’s investment manager.

This content was first published on Valor PRO, a real-time information service Economic value.