Germany suffered the most among EU member states from the Russian supply curtailments, with a number of buyers forced to buy expensive gas on the open market to make up for the Russian shortfall.

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories increased by 1.1 million barrels to 481.2 million barrels.

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories increased by 1.6 million barrels to 480.1 million barrels.

Brent climbed 93 cents, or 1.2%, to $78.38 a barrel, WTI gained 96 cents, or 1.4%, to $72.29 a barrel.

Brent dipped 63 cents, or 0.8%, to $80.96 a barrel, WTI was down 69 cents, or 0.9%, at $75.03.

Prior to the sanctions, between October 2021 and September 2022, diesel imports from Russia made up 53% of Northwest Europe’s seaborne imports.

The Brent crude oil spot price will fall from an average of $84/b in the second quarter of 2023 (2Q23) to $81/b in 4Q23 and then average $78/b in 2024.

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories decreased by 1.7 million barrels to 478.5 million barrels.

Brent dipped 18 cents, or 0.2%, to $84.57 a barrel , WTI were down 16 cents, also 0.2%, at $78.00 a barrel.

The EU banned imports of Russian oil products from Feb. 5, two months after imposing restrictions on seaborne crude shipments from the country.

After excluding 7 bids due to formal errors, the regulator selected 119 proposals with prices ranging between €7.24c/kWh and the maximum permissible value of €7.35c/kWh. The volume-weighted average reached €7.34c/kWh (+25% compared to the previous round).

Brent rose 45 cents, 0.5%, to $83.90 a barrel, WTI gained 42 cents, or 0.6%, to $77.47 a barrel.

Brent were down 30 cents, or 0.36%, at $82.86 a barrel, WTI traded at $76.09 a barrel.

At the same time, Russian LNG imports into the EU rose by around a third to 14.1 million mt (19 Bcm), but it was LNG from other sources -- the US in particular -- that helped fill some of the gap left by lost Russian gas.

Even though Europe has significantly cut its reliance on Russian gas, a lot of the storage that they used to cut the reliance was actually Russian gas from the past.