Oil futures were set to open for Asian trade on Sunday, after both Brent and U.S. crude benchmarks posted their biggest weekly falls in two years last week as the United States announced the largest ever release from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Both contracts settled down around 13% for the week. On Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden announced a release of 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil for six months from May, which would amount to 180 million barrels.
On Friday, member countries of the International Energy Agency committed to another coordinated oil release in an extraordinary meeting, according to Japan’s industry ministry.
Still, “when you look at the release from the SPR, there are still a lot of questions about how they’re going to get all that oil out of there,” said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
Energy markets worldwide were roiled and prompted concern about global supply when sanctions imposed on Russia over the invasion disrupted oil supplies and drove oil prices to nearly $140 a barrel, the highest in about 14 years.
