SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific were mixed in Thursday morning trade as oil prices fell sharply.

The international benchmark is published in the morning Asia trading hours Brent crude futuresThe barrel price fell by 3.78%, to $109.16 U.S. crude futuresDropped 4.7% to $102.74/barrel

U.S. President Joe Biden’sAccording to NBC News, a source revealed that administration has been considering a plan for releasing about 1 million barrels of oil daily from strategic petroleum reserves over six months. Volatility in oil markets has caused a spike in prices worldwide since Russia invaded Ukraine over a month back.

The following are the markets in the Asia-Pacific region. Nikkei 225Japan had a flat economy, but the Topix index was lower than the flatline. South Korea KospiThe increase was 0.5%

In the meantime, S&P/ASX 200Australia saw a gain of 0.39% in shares of the major mining companies. BHPAdvanced 2.81% Fortescue Metals GroupIt rose by 4.29% Rio TintoThe increase was 1.99%

MSCI’s Asia-Pacific broadest index, which is not based on Japan, traded at 0.1% more.

China will publish its March official manufacturing Purchasing Management Index at 9:30 a.m. HK/SIN. China Beige Book conducted an independent survey before releasing the data. showed China’s factories were hit harder in the first quarter than last year.

Overnight stateside, the S&P 500 declined 0.63% to 4,602.45. The Dow Jones Industrial lost 65.38 Points, or 0.9%, to 35.228.81. Tech-rich Nasdaq Composite fell 1.21%, to around 14,442.28.

The U.S. dollar indexThe indices that track the greenback in relation to a basket of peers were at 97.78 on Wednesday as the currency struggled to recover from a drop above 99 levels earlier in the week.

The Japanese yenThe dollar traded at $122.29, which is still higher than the levels of 124 against it earlier in this week. The Australian dollarIt was trading at $0.7506, but had largely traded between $0.747 to $0.753 thus far in this week.