On Friday, Oil prices inched up but were set to fall around 3 per cent for the week after consuming countries agreed to release 240 million barrels of oil from emergency stocks to help offset the disrupted Russian supply.

Brent crude futures rose 13 cents, or 0.1 per cent, to $100.71 a barrel at 0139 GMT, while US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures advanced 35 cents, or 0.4 per cent, to $96.38 a barrel.

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Analysts said the emergency oil release, amounting to about 1 million barrels per day from May to the end of the year, might cap price rises in the short term but would not fully cover volumes lost from Russia due to sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special operation”.

“Although this is the biggest release since the stockpile was created in 1980, it will fail to change the fundamentals in the oil market ultimately. It is likely to delay further increases in output from key producers,” media reported.