On Wednesday morning, global oil prices showed a steady increase after falling by more than 1% on the eve of the upcoming OPEC+ meeting.
To put it more precisely, the cost of June futures for North Sea Brent crude oil on the London ICE Futures Exchange increased by 0.58% - to trade at $64.54 per barrel, while May futures increased by 0.8%, to trade at $64.65 per barrel. As a result of the trading session on Tuesday, these contracts dipped by 1.3% - to trade at $64.14 per barrel.
Meanwhile, the price of May futures for a mixture of WTI in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) rose by 0.58% - to $60.9 per barrel. A day earlier, the value of these contracts lost 1.6% and reported at $60.55 per barrel.
Today, commodity market participants are focused solely on the upcoming OPEC+ meeting on March 31 and April 1. On the agenda is an assessment of the situation on the market before the discussion by the ministers of the countries of quotas for oil production in May. The ministerial meeting will take place on Thursday.
The day before, the OPEC+ technical committee discussed the extension of the current quotas for May and the preservation of Saudi Arabia's voluntary restrictions of 1 million barrels per day as the main option. In addition, the experts of the technical committee have lowered the forecast for demand for black gold for 2021. According to the new scenario, demand this year will increase by 5.6 million b/d, rather than 5.9 million b/d, as previously expected. At the end of the meeting, Secretary-General of the alliance Mohammed Barkindo stressed that it is necessary to be extremely attentive to the changing conditions in the black gold market, which still remains uncertain.
The final decision on the terms of the deal in May will be made at the OPEC+ meeting on Thursday. In turn, investors hope that the parameters of the deal will remain unchanged.
Meanwhile, the report of the American Petroleum Institute (API) on black gold reserves in the United States over the past week did not exert significant pressure on the quotes. According to API information, commercial oil reserves in America increased by 3.9 million barrels during the previous week. Plus, the current week is likely to be the sixth consecutive week of growth in US inventories. At the same time, experts believe that oil reserves increased by only 0.1 million barrels. In the near future, traders expect official data from the United States Department of Energy.
One of the important factors boosting the oil market was strong statistics from China, which gave investors optimistic hopes for the prospects for demand for raw materials.
Therefore, the Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) in the processing industry of the People's Republic of China in the current month increased to the maximum since December of last year 51.9 points from 50.6 points in February. At the same time, analysts predicted an increase in the indicator only to 51.2 points.
