Brent crunches 0.05% to finish at $55.91 and WTI drops 0.08% at $52.61.

Oil prices ended close to balance on Tuesday on the eve of a weekly report on US crude and...

Oil stable before the release of US stocks

Brent crunches 0.05% to finish at $55.91 and WTI drops 0.08% at $52.61.

Oil prices ended close to balance on Tuesday on the eve of a weekly report on US reserves of crude and petroleum products.

barrel of Brent from the North Sea for delivery in March picked up 0.05% or 3 cents in London and finished at $55.91.

The US barrel of WTI for the same month dropped 0.08%, or 4 cents, at $52.61.

the end of the morning, the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) will publish its traditional report on the state of American stocks.

Analysts expect reserves of crude oil (+1.5 million barrels) and gasoline (+1.4 MB) to rise, but those of distilled products (-7000,000 barrels) to fall.

Before falling slightly at the end of the session, black gold prices rose for the rest of the day, expecting production to fall in the weeks and months to come.

“Expectations of a tightening of global supply offset fears that a chaotic launch of COVID-19 vaccination campaigns will further dull demand” for Brut, summarizes Avtar Sandu, an analyst at Phillip Futures.

The fact that Iraq has promised to reduce its oil production in January and February, according to information reported by Bloomberg, and that “American President Joe Biden may announce preparatory measures for a ban on new drilling on Wednesday “Troliers and gas companies on federal lands” are likely to support prices, continues Mr. Sandu.

Investors welcome the Iraqi announcement all the more so that Baghdad is generally not among the good students of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and regularly exceeds the production quotas assigned to it by the cartel and its allies via Opep+.

Meanwhile, American production remains relatively high, at 11 million barrels per day, according to the latest figures released by EIA on Friday.

But the upward trend is calming down, another analyst, Stephen Innes of Axi, notes because of “concerns about the effectiveness and deployment of the COVID-19 vaccine.”

In addition, “Iran plans to massively increase production,” reports Eugen Weinberg of Commerzbank. But “oversupply is the last thing the oil market needs right now,” adds Jeffrey Halley of Oanda.