China's crude stocks stood at an 11-month high of 945 million barrels in May, accounting for 63% of the country's crude storage capacity

"Sakhalin-1 is a valuable non-Middle East source for Japan, which depends on the Middle East for 90% of its crude oil imports," said Haguida, the minister for economy, trade and industry.

The Worldwide Rig Count for July was 1,775, up 69 from the 1,706 counted in June 2022,and up 395 from the 1,380 counted in July 2021.

U.S. Rig Count is down 3 from last week to 764, Canada Rig Count is down 1 from last week to 203.

Brent rose 10 cents, or 0.1%, at $96.88 a barrel, WTI was up 21 cents, a 0.2% gain, at $90.87.

The price of OPEC basket of thirteen crudes stood at $104.86 a barrel

Adjust upward the production level for OPEC and non-OPEC Participating Countries by 0.1 mb/d for the month of September 2022

While the U.S. and European Union have already moved to ban imports of Russian oil into their ports, officials are now scrambling to curb Russia’s revenue from its oil sales globally and also avoid soaring energy prices during a time of high inflation.

Energy consumer prices are rising at an annual rate of nearly 40 per cent in the eurozone and 57 per cent in the UK, reflecting the surge in wholesale gas and oil prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That is drastically eating into households’ disposable income.

The incentive to reduce gas consumption is huge after Putin reduced supplies to Germany via the Nord Steam 1 pipeline. The Dutch TTF gas contract, a European benchmark, is trading above 205 euros ($209) per megawatt hour, 10 times its average in the decade through 2020 and equivalent to about $350 per barrel of oil.

TotalEnergies said it would boost spending on short-cycle projects this year to help ease Europe's growing energy supply crunch. It expects its full-year capital spending to hit $16 billion in 2022 as it hopes to increase its sources of European natural gas and produce more LNG in the coming months.

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories increased by 4.5 million barrels to 426.6 million barrels.

Brent were down $1.34, or 1.3%, at $99.20 a barrel, WTI fell $1.28, or 1.4%, to $93.14 a barrel.

The price of OPEC basket of thirteen crudes stood at $106.80 a barrel

The Joint Technical Committee of OPEC+, which includes Russia, trimmed its forecast for a surplus in the oil market this year by 200,000 barrels per day to 800,000 bpd