New Delhi: Amid the COVID-19 restrictions in China and the strengthening of the US dollar, international crude oil prices continued to fall for the third consecutive day on Wednesday.
At around 11.35 a.m., Brent’s December contract on the Intercontinental Exchange took a big loss to trade 0.08% at $94.21 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate’s November contract was trading at $89.13 a barrel, down 0.25% from its previous close.
The global economic outlook and caution ahead of the minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, Ravindra Rao, Head of Commodity Research at Kotak Securities, said.
“Crude oil prices fell 2% and extended losses for the second consecutive session on Tuesday as concerns of a slowdown outweighed concerns of supply tightness. In addition, US relations with the Middle East are likely to deteriorate as OPEC+ decided to cut output by 2 million barrels per day, their biggest supply cut since 2020 despite repeated calls by the US , “They said.
Rao said weakness in crude could continue as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its global growth forecast for 2023 to 2.7%, down from July’s estimate of 2.9%.
Crude oil prices started weakening on Wednesday as investors worried about rising risks of a global slowdown and weakening fuel demand due to the COVID-19 curbs in China, said Sriram Iyer, senior research analyst at Reliance Securities.
China is one of the biggest importers of crude oil and the fall in demand from the country has raised fears of a slowdown.
The fall in prices comes after five days of increase last week when OPEC+ decided to cut production by 2 million barrels per day in November.
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