By Adedapo Adesanya
Brent oil dipped on Tuesday after topping $80 per barrel for the first time since 2018 as investors took profits to truncate the recent rally for crude oil.
Yesterday, the crude oil grade traded at $78.18 per barrel, indicating a decline of 1.7 per cent or $1.35, while the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) grade depreciated by 0.21 per cent or 16 cents to trade at $75.29 per barrel.
Prices rose early at the session with Brent topping $80 a barrel for the first time in three years as the natural gas shortage and price spikes spill over into the crude oil futures market.
Energy commodities have rallied in recent days after the natural gas shortage in Europe went global and this led to a surge in gas, coal, and crude oil prices. The record-high natural gas and power prices in Europe are leading to additional demand for coal and oil in the power generation sector.
Investors quickly took their chances and banked on a level that forecasters have projected in the past few weeks that the commodity will reach.
Despite these, the bullish environment remains for crude as demand has since recovered amid the widescale rollout of the coronavirus vaccine just as the rally in natural gas prices is prompting people to switch from gas to oil.
In addition, global oil demand is expected to continue to grow into the mid-2030s to 108 million barrels per day, after which it is set to plateau until 2045, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said in its 2021 World Oil Outlook (WOO) on Tuesday.
OPEC’s timeline for peak oil demand in its 2021 outlook is a few years earlier than in last year’s WOO report, which had forecast that global oil demand would grow steadily until the late 2030s when it would begin to level. After the COVID pandemic last year, OPEC for the first time put a timeline to peak oil demand.
In this year’s outlook, OPEC sees oil demand growing strongly in the short- and medium-term before demand plateaus in the long term.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) on Tuesday reported a surprise build in crude oil inventories of 4.127 million barrels for the week ending September 24.
The build runs contrary to the analyst expectations who had estimated a loss of 2.333 million barrels for the week.
In the previous week, the API reported a draw in oil inventories of 6.108 million barrels—a larger loss than the 2.400 million barrel draw that analysts had predicted.
The market will wait to confirm how true this is when the US government regulated Energy Information Administration (EIA) releases its official data on Wednesday.
