brent oil futures consolidated a move back above 100 a barrel on wednesday with us crude matching the global benchmark’s gains after saudi arabia suggested it might trim output and a report showed falling us oil inventories further signs that russia is using its exports as a weapon against the west added to nervousness across the energy sector the frontmonth ice brent crude oil future brn00 rose 13 to 10155 a barrel and the equivalent nymex wti oil future cl1 added 14 to 9508 a barrel both contracts had slipped to 8month lows last week with brent nearly touching 93 on hopes a nuclear deal with tehran would allow iran to boost oil exports and amid fears a slowing global economy would crimp energy demand but they rose sharply in the previous session after saudi arabian energy minister prince abdulaziz bin salman raised the prospect of opec reducing its oil production in comments to bloomberg news “while progress on the iranian nuclear deal still seemed positive up to nine opec members confirmed they would support production cuts if iranian supply came back online or if the global economy entered a recession fueling the rally” noted analysts at deutsche bank additional upward price pressure came from a report from the american petroleum institute which showed that crude stockpiles fell by 56 million barrel last week the us energy information administration will release its weekly report on petroleum supplies on wednesday at 1030 am eastern meanwhile us natural gas futures ng00 continued to flirt with the 10 per million british thermal unit level as traders noted signs of additional stress in the sector bloomberg reported that russia’s sakhalin energy had scrapped a shipment of liquified natural gas to an asian customer because of alleged payment issues such disruption to natural gas supplies may worsen the supply crunch elsewhere notably in europe where prices have surged to record levels after moscow cut flows in response to western sanctions over russia’s invasion of ukraine russia also plans to shut the nordstream 1 gas pipeline for three days of maintenance from august 31 the price of ice dutch ttf gas futures was up 33 to 278 euros per megawatt hour on wednesday ten times the price of a year ago in the uk the ice natural gas future rose 42 to 51499 pence a therm compared to 23 pence a year ago britain’s office for national statistics said fuel imports from russia which averaged £499 million 588 million a month in the year through february fell in june to zero that was the first time since data began in 1997 that the uk imported no russian energy a move that reflects the government’s determination not to reward russia for its invasion of ukraine “as a result of the uk government’s ambition to phase out imports of russian oil and gas there were no imports of refined oil crude oil gas or coal coke and briquettes from russia by june 2022” the ons said “this has prompted importers to seek alternatives there have been increases in imports of refined oil from saudi arabia the netherlands belgium and kuwait in recent months partially compensating for reduced imports from russia” the ons added