Oil prices gain over 5.per cent in the week on Kazakh concern, Libya outages



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Oil prices gain over 5.per cent in the week on Kazakh concern, Libya outages

On Friday, US WTI (West Texas Intermediate) and Brent crude oil futures’ prices had slipped, but both benchmarks had scored more than a whopping 5.0 per cent in weekly percentage gains, as market participants appeared to be cashing in on a potential supply concern amid unrests in Kazakh alongside oilfield outages in Libya.

Apart from that, December US nonfarm payrolls miss had led to a growing uncertainty on US Fed’s monetary policy. Before Friday’s US Labor Department’s monthly employment report, capital markets across the globe were banking on a rate-hike as early as this month, mostly riding on the back of minutes from December 14-15 US Fed policy meet released late on Wednesday that had underscored a growing likelihood of a rate-hike as early as January alongside a shrinkage in US Central Bank’s holdings including its Treasury Yields alongside mortgage-backed assets in order to tame a tormenting inflation-surge.

Nonetheless, as Friday’s US nonfarm payrolls data had revealed a mixed depiction on US labor market with unemployment rate falling to a 22-month low of 3.9 per cent, but US employers had created only 199,000 positions compared to an expectation of 400,000 jobs, markets had taken a more cautious approach, eventually leading to a decline in riskier assets such as the black gold futures’ prices.

Crude oil prices gain over 5 per cent in the week

Citing statistics, in the day’s commodity market wind-down, UK crude futures’ prices edged 0.3 per cent lower to $81.75 a barrel, while US WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude oil futures’ prices had settled 0.7 per cent lower to $78.90 per barrel.

On the week, UK crude surged 5.2 per cent, while US WTI Crude Oil contracts’ prices had soared as much as 5.0 per cent. Meanwhile, addressing to US December nonfarm payrolls, a partner at Again Capital Management, John Kilduff said, “Employment data injected a question mark into where we are going from here and Omicron fears have crept back into the market”.

Crude Oil