The price of Brent crude oil futures opened Friday’s trading session near $123 a barrel after an American official called inaccurate a report that the US would soon release oil from its emergency storage, prompting oil prices to skip lower yesterday afternoon. Latest Brent Oil Price In London, Brent crude oil futures for May 2012 delivery was trading at $123.13 a barrel, 06.40 GMT today on the ICE Futures Exchange. The April Brent oil futures contract expired yesterday. Oil prices fell sharply after a report that the UK expects the US to move soon to open its emergency oil reserves in the face of rising prices. Reuters quoted UK sources saying they expected the request soon and said the UK would cooperate with the move. Late yesterday, White House spokesman Jay Carney called the report “inaccurate� and “false� and denied any deal for an oil release was in place. April Brent crude oil futures was $1.45 lower at $123.52 a barrel, after moving in a range of $120.97 to $125.35 a barrel after the inaccurate statement made headlines. “With this idea in the back of its mind, I think the market’s going to be a little sketchy going forward. Nobody wants to take a risk of betting on prices going higher.� said Carl Larry of the Oil Outlooks and Opinions newsletter of the possibility of a release of oil reserves. North Sea Brent crude oil prices have recently traded to near their highest levels since 2008 and gasoline prices in the US have climbed and are widely expected to top $4 a gallon nationwide for the first time since the Summer of 2008. Meanwhile, petrol prices in the UK and most of Europe are at record highs. 82 Days of Crude Oil Last June, when the US sold 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve amid Libya supply worries, stock cover was three days above the five year average. Meanwhile, the near 700 million barrels of SPR crude is sufficient to cover 82.5 days of US net oil imports, the highest level since 1992, according to Energy Information Administration data.

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