oil prices pushed higher on wednesday with supply worries hovering over the market as the war in ukraine neared a onemonth mark and us inventory data loomed for later supply concerns linked to russian’s invasion of ukraine that shows no signs of letting up were again helping to drive gains for crude on wednesday with us oil up 8 and brent climbing 10 so far this week “crude oil prices are higher on continued supply worries and a big inventory drop reported by private forecasters api of 428 million barrels” said peter cardillo chief market economist at spartan capital “however while we expect the doe to show a drawdown the decline is likely to baround 1 million barrels” the api also reportedly showed weekly inventory declines of 626000 barrels for gasoline and 826000 barrels for distillates sources said investors are keeping close watch on a fourday trip by president joe biden that begins thursday with meetings with nato the group of seven and the eu aimed at shoring up the campaign against russia oil prices have been gaining this week on speculation the eu bloc may vote to sanction russian oil echoing moves by the us and the uk though some say those expectations have dimmed somewhat opinion ukraine war is a wakeup call to ditch oil and gas forever “it seems that market participants no longer view an immediate eu import ban on oil from russia as likely there is still considerable resistance in those eu countries that are heavily dependent on russian oil” said carsten fritsch analyst at commerzbank “however they might still change their stance if russia were to further escalate its targeting of the civilian population in its war in ukraine” he said in a note to clients russia was keeping up its offense across ukraine on wednesday with its forces accused of kidnapping a humanitarian convoy headed to besieged mariupol fritsch said russia remains challenged in trying to sell its oil with the price discount on urals as compared with brent now up to 27 per barrel read jamie dimon tells biden that us europe need ‘marshall plan’ for energy independence report