{"id":471951,"date":"2026-03-12T18:40:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T18:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/471951\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T18:40:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T18:40:07","slug":"what-on-earth-is-going-on-with-the-oil-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/471951\/","title":{"rendered":"What on earth is going on with the oil price?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">On Wednesday, the IEA announced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cly093xxlzzo\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">dozens of countries had agreed to release a record amount of oil from their emergency reserves<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Prices fell after the announcement, but they&#8217;ve since risen<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c1w5141vx53o\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> back above $100 a barrel.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Bill Farren-Price, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said the release is a &#8220;sticking plaster on a much bigger problem&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said the market had already priced the move in, and then further ship attacks sent the price up again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Inevitably the price reaction is going to continue until we see some sort of off-ramp for this conflict and that could be very, very complicated and drawn out,&#8221; he adds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There is also a shortage of refining capacity meaning the release is not a magic switch to increase the flow of refined products like petrol and jet fuel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The releasing of the reserves is more of an attempt to boost confidence by signalling to markets that governments have recognised the threats and are acting  to address them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In short, it may not help oil prices fall, but it may stop them climbing as much as they otherwise would have done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Wednesday, the IEA announced dozens of countries had agreed to release a record amount of oil from&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-471951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}