On Tuesday, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that a release of the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) would likely only have a short impact on the oil markets.
The agency’s analysis showed that if around 15-48 million barrels of the reserve is released to the market, it would highly bring around USD2/barrel down while for the pump stations, gasoline prices would only slip by 5-10 cents/gallon.
The EIA underlined that the lower levels would only happen for a short period of time.
The decision to release the SPR came as, in late October, US oil prices hit the highest level in seven years of almost USD85.50/barrel. On Tuesday, they traded at around USD80.60/barrel as the market was pressured by the forecasts for an increase in global production in the coming months.
