Brent Crude : Oil decreased more than 1.5% to below $93 per barrel, while WTI crude oil fell more than 2% to below $85 per barrel on Wednesday, after rising to as high as $94.8 earlier in the session, as flows through the Druzhba pipeline which carries Russian oil to Hungary had resumed following a brief outage.
Meanwhile, EIA data showed US crude stocks fell more than expected while gasoline and distillate inventories rose. Elsewhere, investors continued to fret about resurgent Covid outbreaks in top crude importer China which made the possibility of an economic reopening more uncertain and further clouded the outlook for demand.
The TTF Natural gas futures, the European benchmark, were trading around €120 per megawatt hour as investors continued to weigh lower supplies and forecasts for colder weather. Supplies from Norway, the top European exporter, were disrupted recently as two facilities had processing issues.
There are also concerns about LNG imports from the US amid a restart delay from the Freeport LNG plant in Texas. At the same time, an escalation in tensions between the West and Russia after a rocket strike on a Polish village added risks to European energy infrastructures.
Meanwhile, the temperatures in Europe are set to fall below average at the end of the week, which should boost heating demand. Still, prices are 70% below the summer peak of €339, as milder weather in October dented demand for gas-intensive heating and allowed for storage build.
Also Gasoline futures extended losses to below $2.5 per gallon in mid-November, the lowest in almost four weeks, after a higher-than-expected build in inventories rattled investors. The latest EIA data showed that US gasoline stocks rose by 2.207 million barrels to 207.9 million last week, after fourth consecutive weekly drops, and way more than market expectations of a 0.31-million-barrel increase
