A gloomy outlook engulfed the black commodity market after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the US Department of Energy lowered their forecasts for crude oil demand.
Most recently, OPEC cut its global oil demand forecasts on Wednesday for 2022 and 2023 by 460,000 and 360,000 barrels per day, respectively.
Among the reasons for the reduction is due to high inflation, growth in advanced economies that has stagnated and the Covid-19 shutdown in China.
Meanwhile, the US Department of Energy lowered its expectations for American and global consumption, seeing consumption in the country increase slightly by 0.9% in 2023 from a previous forecast of 1.7%.
The global consumption forecast was lowered to 1.5% from the previous forecast of 2%.
This led to gloomy crude oil trading, with Brent futures trading at $92 a barrel while US WTI was at $87 a barrel.
Also adding pressure to prices is data released by the American Petroleum Institute (API) which saw a jump of more than 7 million barrels in US crude oil supplies last week, indicating weak demand from the world's number one economy.
