HK Stock Market Move | A billion barrels of strategic reserves support, unable to stop soaring oil prices. PETRO-KING (02178) rose more than 8%, Shandong Molong Petroleum Machinery (00568) rose more than 7%.

Some oil and gas stocks rose. As of the time of writing, PETRO-KING (02178) rose by 8.2% to 0.33 Hong Kong dollars; Shandong Molong Petroleum Machinery (00568) rose by 7.18% to 11.34 Hong Kong dollars; CNOOC (00883) rose by 3.49% to 29.04 Hong Kong dollars. On the news front, in order to address a potential supply disruption crisis, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced its largest-ever release of oil reserves plan, releasing a total of 400 million barrels of oil reserves. Nevertheless, international oil prices continue to rise. During the Asia-Pacific trading session on March 12th, Brent crude oil futures rose by 8% to over 99 US dollars. Some analysts believe that the oil market panic has eased, but the market is still concerned that the strategic oil reserves released by various countries may not be enough to offset the supply gap in the Middle East. Huatai Futures analysis pointed out that although the IEA announced the release of strategic reserves totaling 400 million barrels, the overall delivery speed is slow. For example, the US's 170 million barrel strategic reserve would take 120 days to complete delivery. With a supply interruption of up to 10 million barrels per day due to the Strait, if the 400 million barrels of crude oil cannot be quickly released in the short term, it will still be like a drop in the bucket for alleviating the market's supply gap. Several short-term paths to mitigate oil prices have appeared, such as bypassing, lifting sanctions and releasing strategic reserves, but they still cannot fully offset the fundamental contradiction of the Strait's interruption. The market will still need the Strait to resume navigation for normalcy to be restored in the future.