The price of Brent North Sea oil decreases the second consecutive day. As to the auction on September 1, the November futures fell in price by almost $ 1.5 a barrel to $ 45.72.
Brent crude fell by almost 3% to trade below $ 46 a barrel, the lowest level in almost three weeks. The driver of yesterday’s decline in prices was the US Department of Energy report on stocks, according to which, last week, the country’s oil reserves rose by 2.3 million barrels.
The increase was more significant than expected. In addition, it exceeded the value published by the American Petroleum Institute (API) the day before. The main reason for the increase in the stocks was a sharp increase in imports, which reached 8.9 million barrels per day, which is the highest level in nearly four years. This explains why the oil reserves declined very little in the summer, despite the very high volumes of oil refining, and now they are still 40% above the long-term average level.
The specialized portal Investing.com notes that the current debate on limiting the production of oil is nothing but an empty hot air. This is evident from the fact that OPEC will do whatever you want, except for production cuts. According to the Reuters survey, in August, oil production in OPEC rose to a record level of 33.5 million barrels per day.
World oil prices began to decline sharply in June 2014 at $ 117 per barrel. On January 20, 2016 they reached the minimum – $ 27.20 per barrel, but then a gradual rise began.