International oil prices fell to 5% this Wednesday, due to fears of a recession in the United States, a drop in demand for gasoline in that country and concerns about the Chinese economy.
The drop this Thursday also occurred after the United States Federal Reserve (Fed) increased its interest rate again by 25 basis points, in addition to indicating that it could pause the increases in its next decision in June.
The Mexican export mix fell 5.19% in the session on Wednesday, to 60.71 dollars per barrel, according to data from Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
The US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) lost 4.27%, to close at 68.60 dollars per barrel, while the Brent of the North Sea had a decrease of 3.97%, to 72.33 dollars per barrel, according to information from the Reuters agency. .
A day earlier, both WTI and Brent posted their biggest intraday drop since January of this year, while the Mexican export mix posted its biggest one-day loss since March.
Crude prices have been falling since last April 12. From that point to date, North Sea Brent loses 17.18%, while WTI falls 17.61% and Mexican crude decreases 17.97 percent.
Ana Azuara, a Raw Materials analyst at Banco Base, said that the increase in the Fed’s reference interest rate on Wednesday had little to do with the drop in the price of oil, because the raw material began to fall from Tuesday night negotiations.
“Concerns that the US economy could slip into recession were what led the price of hydrocarbons to fall, and then that decline received a boost when the weekly report of the International Energy Agency (EIA) was published. in English) in which a drop in the implicit demand for gasoline was observed,” he explained.
They fear less demand
A recession in the United States, which is the largest consumer of crude oil in the world, would cause lower demand for fuel in the country, hence fears of an economic slowdown will push prices down.
The EIA reported that gasoline inventories rebounded by 1.7 million barrels last week, when analysts polled by Reuters expected a draw in inventories of 1.2 million barrels.
Ana Azuara assured that the EIA report shows that the demand for gasoline is “weak”, especially considering that the summer season has already begun, in which highway trips increase and typically increases the demand for fuel in the United States .
“Most notably, gasoline demand has repaid all the increases we’ve seen in the previous weeks,” Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, told Reuters.
Another factor that has put downward pressure on crude oil prices in recent days is concerns about the Chinese economy.
Last weekend, it was revealed that manufacturing activity in the Asian nation fell unexpectedly during April.
China is important to fuel demand prospects, as it is the world’s second-largest oil consumer, behind only the United States.
With the drop in recent days, the price of crude oil accumulates a decrease of more than 17% since mid-April of last year, due to weak economic data due to fears of a drop in demand for fuels.
In the first three days of May, the WTI price has fallen 10.65%, while Brent and the mix lose 9.06 and 9.43%, respectively. (With agency information)
