oil futures ticked higher wednesday morning after russia cut off naturalgas deliveries to poland and bulgaria as investors also assess the threat to demand from china’s covid lockdowns   west texas intermediate crude for june delivery cl1 cl00 clm22 rose 39 cents or 04 to 10209 a barrel on the new york mercantile exchange   june brent crude brnm22 rose 46 cents or 04 to 10545 a barrel on the ice futures europe while the most actively traded july contract brn00 brnn22 was up 57 cents or 05 at 10518 a barrel   may naturalgas futures ngk22 rose 15 to 695 per million british thermal units   june gasoline rbm22 was up 07 at 33328 a gallon while june heating oil hom22 fell 07 to 3792 a gallon statecontrolled russian giant gazprom rugazp said tuesday that it had cut natural gas deliveries to poland and bulgaria as they refused to pay in russian rubles as demanded by president vladimir putin futures tracking europe’s wholesale gas price reached a high of €119 per megawatt hour in early trading wednesday before paring back to €10579 a gain of around 4 read ‘energy is being increasingly weaponized’ analysts weigh up risks after russia cuts gas to two eu countries “a concern for the eu european union market as well as global gas markets is whether russia will escalate further by cutting supplies to other european countries” said warren patterson head of commodities strategy at ing in a note the “very real risk for even further escalation suggests that european gas prices will remain well supported” he wrote “this will have a spillover into other gas markets particularly the asian market europe will have to increasingly compete with asia for flexible lng liquefied natural gas supply which will keep asian spot lng prices well supported” oil rebounded tuesday with the move tied in part to an announcement by the people’s bank of china promising monetarypolicy support for small businesses and industries hit hardest by covid19 worries over crude demand continue though as beijing moved to rapidly test residents fears of a lockdown of china’s capital had weighed on crude prices us supply data will also be in focus wednesday the american petroleum institute on tuesday afternoon reported that us crudeoil inventories rose by 478 million barrels last week according to a source who cited the data us gasoline supplies meanwhile were seen down 391 million according to the source while distillates were up 431000 barrels official inventories data from the energy information administration is due wednesday morning analysts surveyed by the wall street journal forecast the eia data to show crude inventories up by 600000 barrels while gasoline supplies were seen up 100000 barrels and distillate stocks down 100000 barrels