The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC plus) only want to increase oil production moderately - in return, American President Joe Biden plans to release an exceptionally large amount of American oil reserves.

Christian Siedenbiedel

Editor in Business.

  • Follow I follow

Winand von Petersdorff-Campen

Economic correspondent in Washington.

  • Follow I follow

As the oil cartel announced on Thursday after an online meeting, oil production is to be increased by 432,000 barrels (159 liter barrel) per day in May.

That was within expectation.

Giovanni Staunovo, oil analyst at UBS bank, pointed out that the meeting lasted only 12 minutes;

that is unusual in the often long-struggling organization.

In OPEC plus, oil states like Saudi Arabia continue to work with Russia despite the war in Ukraine.

At times, the price of oil fell to around $106 a barrel for the North Sea variety Brent, while the American variety West Texas Intermediate (WTI) fell to $103 a barrel at times.

America submits

The American government wants to bring large quantities of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve onto the market.

President Joe Biden plans to release 1 million barrels of crude oil per day for up to 180 days.

About 568 million barrels of crude oil are held in caverns in Texas and Louisiana, according to the Department of Energy.

According to calculations by the Energy Ministry, the total amount is sufficient to get by for 950 days without oil imports.

The planned release is the third within a few months and at the same time the largest ever.

Previously, Biden tried to dampen prices by releasing 50 million barrels in November and 30 million barrels in March.

Expensive gasoline has become a political risk for Biden, who fears for a Democratic congressional majority in the midterm elections.

Attempts to relax the sanctions regime on Venezuela in order to get more oil from there are met with domestic resistance from both parties.

The technical details of the release are not yet known.

Oil is usually sold at auction to the highest bidder.

However, the Department of Energy can also lend amounts of oil to refineries and get them back later, along with an additional amount of crude oil.

For the government budget, the release acts like a warm rain in the form of billions in revenue: the Department of Energy paid an average of just under $30 for the barrel.

Now prices around 100 dollars are possible.

Meeting of IEA countries

The member countries of the International Energy Agency (IEA) want to meet for an extraordinary meeting on Friday.

A coordinated release of emergency reserves is to be discussed there.

It is not yet clear whether the release of American reserves is part of this action, reports Carsten Fritsch, oil analyst at Commerzbank.

The oil price had already come under considerable pressure on Thursday morning and also temporarily supported the Dax in Germany;

however, this did not last long.

Heating oil was also a little cheaper again: 100 liters cost 132 euros, as reported by the Heizoel24 Internet portal.

At the beginning of March it had been 214 euros.

Refueling has also become somewhat cheaper again – from a high level.

In the past few days there had already been individual gas stations where you could get petrol for less than 2 euros per liter.

Now even the average price in the course of the day has fallen below this mark in many cities, for example in Chemnitz, Gera, Erfurt, Kaiserslautern, Karlsruhe or Koblenz.

On national average, Super E10 last cost 2.03 euros and diesel 2.13 euros per liter.