SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Oil prices edged up on Wednesday, boosted by demand hopes on progress made in U.S. vaccine rollouts.
Brent crude futures rose 20 cents to $62.90 a barrel at 0703 GMT, up from four days of losses. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up 13 cents at $59.88 per barrel, recovering from three days of losses.
Both benchmarks had dipped in Asia’s early morning trading.
Reuters cited analysts as saying that demand recovery hopes thanks to the rollouts of vaccine kept oil prices supported.
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that the United States would have enough COVID-19 vaccine for every American adult by the end of May, after Merck & Co agreed to make rival Johnson & Johnson’s inoculation.
Meanwhile, the market’s attention is on a forthcoming Thursday meeting by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies, together called OPEC+, at a time when they are generally positive on the oil market outlook compared with a year ago when they slashed supply to boost prices.
The market widely expects them to ease production cuts, which were the deepest ever, by about 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), with OPEC’s leader, Saudi Arabia, ending its voluntary production cut of 1 million bpd.
“The recent selloff may help reinforce Saudi’s cautious stance and delay any production increase,” Reuters quoted Stephen Innes, global market strategist at Axi, as saying.
“It’s probably something that could sway the OPEC+ increase more back toward the 500,000 bpd as opposed to the 1.5 million bpd,” he said.
