Oil prices in the United States hit their highest levels in six years, as a deadlock in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) raised the prospect of a summer in which the crude production would fail to keep up with the rebound in demand, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
Futures for West Texas Intermediate, the main grade of US crude, jumped 2.4% from nearly $ 76.95 a barrel on Friday, their highest level since the oil price crash. energy at the end of 2014. Brent crude, the benchmark in global energy markets, rose 0.8% to $ 77.77 a barrel after recovering when the OPEC meeting was called off on Monday. .
The rebound has taken U.S. crude gains this year to nearly 60%, an increase fueled by a pickup in fossil fuel consumption as economies reopen, notes the trade publication, noting that the United Nations Oil-exporting countries and their allies continued to restrict daily production, limiting supplies.
Prices at the pump in the United States have reached their highest levels in nearly seven years in recent days, with a national average of over $ 3 per gallon.
OPEC members and their allies via the OPEC + agreement have decided to postpone their ministerial summit, which was initially scheduled for Monday, without setting a date for their next meeting.
The summit which had already started last Thursday, then postponed by a day, should be resumed Monday by videoconference before the cartel decides to postpone it to a later date, due to the disagreement over technical discussions.
The objective of this meeting was to set the production quotas for the month of August, expected to rise slightly. The cartel already plans to increase oil production by 400,000 barrels per day every month between August and December, for a total of 2 million barrels daily put back on the market by the end of the year, but disagreements remain. between the members of the alliance around the reference production volume.
Since 2016, the alliance, which brings together the 13 members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and 10 other producer countries including Russia, has implemented a policy of voluntary reduction in supply, which was greatly amplified after the outbreak of the pandemic to meet the demand gap. Since April 2020, it has left millions of barrels underground every day.
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