Investing.com - Oil prices slipped on Wednesday in Asia as worries over the escalation in the prolonged Sino-U.S. trade war added to concerns over the demand outlook.
U.S. Crude Oil WTI Futures slipped 0.1% to $53.59 by 1:16 AM ET (05:16 GMT). International Brent also slipped 0.1% to $58.86.
The U.S. labelled China as a “currency manipulator” earlier this week. While reports suggested that the labelling is merely symbolic, some analysts said the move could lead to a scaling up of the trade war and harsher impacts on global economic growth.
“We shouldn’t underestimate the potential impact of a full-blown trade war between the world’s two biggest economies,” said Bart Melek, head of global commodity strategy at TD Securities, in a Bloomberg report.
“This could very well mean we as a market significantly overestimated demand growth for oil and we could easily be in a surplus situation in 2020.”
Meanwhile, reports that U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration ratcheted up action against Venezuela continued to be cited as supportive for the oil markets today and limited losses.
Trump signed an executive order late Monday in the U.S. declaring a total economic embargo against Venezuela, freezing all of the government’s assets and prohibiting transactions with the country, unless specifically exempted.
In other news, weekly data from the American Petroleum Institute showed U.S. crude inventories fell by 3.4 million barrels in the week ended Aug.2 to 439.6 million barrels.
Official data from the government's Energy Information Administration is due tomorrow.