Oil prices soar over 3% on Mexican oil rig outage, weaker US Dollar

• Financial

On Tuesday, both US WTI (West Texas Intermediate) and UK crude oil futures’ prices had rallied over 3 per cent, extending a latest streak of blowout gains that had nearly pared almost all of the losses that both crude benchmarks had stomached last week, as a fire in a Mexican offshore oil platform had knocked as much as 400,000 bpd (barrels per day) out of equation for an unforeseeable future, while a softer US Dollar added to further impetus on crude oil futures’ prices.

On top of that, latest leg of unyielding gains in crude oil futures’ prices came forth amid full approval of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines from the US FDA, stoking hopes of a decline in delta cases which has been plaguing oil demands in the United States lately, while an apparent control in China’s latest COVID-19 outbreak had stepped up investors’ morale further.

Adding further bullish bias into a blazing rally in crude oil prices, a fire incident on an offshore oil platform of Mexico’s state-backed Pemex had wiped out roughly 25 per cent of its entire output, halting roughly 421,000 barrels per day of production.

Crude oil extends gain amid Pemex oil rig outage

Citing statistics, in the day’s commodity market wind-up, UK crude jumped as much as 3.4 per cent to settle down at $71.05 a barrel, while US WTI crude oil futures’ prices gained 2.9 per cent to $67.54 a barrel.

Meanwhile, addressing to yesterday’s FDA approval of Pfizer-BioNTech pandemic vaccines, a director of market research at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut, Gary Cunningham said, “Concerns are easing that we will not see a global shutdown due to the Delta variant”.

So far, US crude oil futures had gained more than 8.0 per cent this week, offsetting a roughly 7.6 per cent decline last week.