At the beginning of the trading day on Wednesday, 27 July 2022 oil prices started to increase after industry data showed an unexpected larger drop in US crude stocks. On Tuesday 26 July, industry group the American Petroleum Institute said that US crude stock fell by 4 million barrels last week. According to Reuters, the drop is four times greater than the expected drop of one million barrels that oil commodity market analysts had predicted.
On 27 July 2022, at 8:26 am CET, the American light crude oil West Texas Intermediate (WTI) traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) commodity market at US$ 95.74 per barrel with a daily growth of +0.80%. At the time mentioned, the European counterpart of WTI crude oil, North Sea Brent crude oil, traded on the Intercontinental Exchange Europe (ICE) commodity market at US$ 104.85 per barrel with a +0.43% price increase. However, since the beginning of this year, the Brent North Sea oil has seen a price increase of +39.97% and in a year-to-date comparison, the price increase represents 54.65% in the last 52 weeks. In an annual comparison, WTI increased its price by +49.03%, since the beginning of this year it grew by +33.18%.
According to the US Dollar Currency (DXY) index, on 27 July 2022, dollar strengthened and we saw it at a price level of 107. Meanwhile, yesterday we saw the USD at a price level of 106.40 and today, at 8:58 am CET, the dollar was at 107.13 with a moderate daily decrease of -0.06%. Compared to the price of oil, which is in a bull market, the price of gold does not copy this trend, and the price of investment gold is in decline. On 27 July at 9:08 am CET, it traded on the Commodities Exchange Centre (COMEX) commodity market at US$ 1,717.00 per troy ounce, with a daily weakening of -0.041% of the price so far.
Apart from the drop in oil stocks, according to the American Petroleum Institute (API), there was also a drop in fuel stocks, namely gasoline, by 1.1 million barrels. The original predictions of analysts, based on the API survey, indicated an increase in stocks by 3.5 million barrels. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) releases its weekly oil report later today, Wednesday 27 July in the afternoon Central European time. Oil prices also increased after Russia’s Gazprom announced that it would limit gas supply through the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline to Germany to a fifth of its capacity due to further revision of the system. Meanwhile, on 26 July the European Union countries approved an austerity emergency plan to curb demand in order to limit gas consumption for some countries.
