At the end of this week’s trading, the global oil markets ended Friday’s session with balanced increases in prices, which pushed oil to achieve gains for the seventh week in a row. The last time that Brent crude rose for seven consecutive weeks was at the beginning of last year, between January and February, which indicates that the oil markets entered this year a new phase of recovery, and over a long period of time.
Yesterday, Brent crude recorded an increase of 41 cents, or by 0.5%, bringing its futures prices to $86.81 per barrel. While the prices of US West Texas Intermediate crude oil increased by 37 cents, or by 0.5%, to reach the prices of its futures contracts at $83.19 per barrel. In conclusion of the week’s trading, Brent crude has recorded a weekly increase of 0.45%.
These increases in global oil prices were driven by yesterday’s report by the International Energy Agency, which indicated that oil demand reached record levels of 103 barrels per day last July (see cities). It should be noted that OPEC, in turn, had announced last Thursday that it expects global demand for prices to rise by about 2.44 million barrels per day this year, which gave the markets an indication of the direction of oil to record additional increases in prices in the second half of the year.
Knowing that the oil markets received some disappointing news from China, with the announcement that its total exports decreased by 14.5% in July, compared to last year. However, oil prices returned and maintained their gains at the end of the week due to the expectations of the International Energy Agency and OPEC. The oil markets also received some impetus from the positive US economic data, which indicated that the Federal Reserve is heading towards ending the wave of interest hikes, which could contribute to giving some impetus to economic growth rates.
2023-08-12 11:27:37
#Oil #prices #longest #streak #gains #beginning
