On Monday, April 18, amid greater fears of supply shortages, international oil prices rose for four consecutive trading days and fully recovered all the decline since the White House announced the release of the largest strategic oil reserve in US history at the end of March. Some ridiculed that the Biden administration had done useless work.

The WTI May contract rose above $108a day, rising as high as $1.70, or 1.6%, on the day, the highest since March 30. WTI June futures also rose above $108 at one point to a high on March 30. The June contract not only exceeded $113, but also tried to push up $114, up as much as $2.10, or 1.9%, on the day, the highest since March 30.

On March 31st local time, the Biden administration announced the largest release of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in U.S. History. In addition to making every effort to encourage domestic oil production, it will release an average of 1 million barrels of strategic oil reserves per day on the market over the next six months, for a total of 180 million barrels in six months.

This shows that international oil prices have reversed the downward trend in the first week of April and returned to the levels before the news of "the largest oil dump in US history". Analysts point out that concerns about supply disruptions in Russia and Libya are outweighing the impact of weak demand.

Moreover, a week after the United States announced an unprecedented sell-off of oil reserves, the International Energy Agency (IEA) also announced its largest release of oil reserves in its 47-year history, and Reuters even revealed that IEA members plan to release 240 million barrels of oil in the six months from May.

However, under the superposition of two major news that seemed to be good for the supply side, the international oil price quickly returned to the psychological mark of $100. A week ago, on April 12, both oil prices posted their biggest closing gains since at least March 21, rebounding strongly from an one-month low. Last week, WTI rose more than 8.8 per cent in four trading days, and cloth oil rose nearly 8.7 per cent, starting to reverse the decline of more than 1 per cent the previous week.

In this regard, Wall Street has pointed out that this is related toOPECThe statement that it is unable to fill the gap in Russian oil and the resumption of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine“Dead end”, the potential risk of European sanctions against Rosneft, andIEAJointly release reserves with the United States or“be of no avail”Direct correlation。

Wall Street analysts generally pointed out that the main factor affecting the rise and fall of oil prices is the supply side. In March, there was news that Europe and the United States may join hands to ban Russian crude oil, the market is worried about setting off a battle for crude oil, cloth oil once reached a 2008 high of $140.

In the face of the latest newsIn addition to the deteriorating situation in Russia and Ukraine, it was reported on Friday that Russian oil production fell 7.5% in early April compared with March, while the European Union was drafting a proposal to gradually ban the import of Russian crude oil.

This past weekend, the supply situation was worsened by the news that oil fields and ports in Libya, a member of the OPEC, had been suspended by force majeure. Libya's national oil company warned on Monday that it expected "a painful wave of closures" of its facilities after the country's largest oil field was shut down and production was expected to plunge by more than 500000 barrels a day. Analysts say this gives some impetus to the oil bulls.

"with global supply so tight, even the slightest supply disruption could have a huge impact on oil prices," said Jeffrey Halley, an analyst at foreign exchange broker OANDA.

Many critics have begun to predict that the Biden administration's attempts to drive down retail gasoline prices by repeatedly using strategic oil reserves are futile. Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, believes that US retail gasoline prices rose last week and are nearing an all-time high again.

The national average price of a gallon of regular gasoline on Monday was $4.08, up from $4.07 on Friday and down from a recent high of $4.33 last month, but still at least 70 per cent higher than when Biden took office in January 2021, according to AAA estimates.

Lipow said that Russia supplied more than 4 million b / d of oil to Europe in 2021 and 700000 b / d to the US. If Europe and the US were to ban all Russian oil imports, it would be impossible to find nearly 5 million b / d of alternative supply at present.

Many industry analysts also say that the essence of strategic inventory release is only the transfer of inventory nature.Failure to change the structural deficit caused by years of underinvestment in new production and the overall imbalance between global supply and demand for crude oil would also undermine the Biden administration's commitment to favour new energy.

'We are worried that the Biden administration is not focusing on real structural problems, but is trying to find short-term solutions to the symptoms rather than the root causes, 'said Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president of policy, economy, and regulatory affairs at the American Petroleum Institute API, a private organization.