Oil extends rally, jumps to fresh 7-year peak amid growing geopolitical worries



by   |  VIEW 1033

Oil extends rally, jumps to fresh 7-year peak amid growing geopolitical worries

On Friday, both US and UK crude oil futures’ prices jumped to their highest level in more than 7 years, while both benchmarks score their sixth straight weekly percentage gains, marking off the longest weekly streak of gains since October last year, as an ongoing spat over geo-political influence spanning across many fronts kept overheating the crude oil market.

If truth is to be spoken, an upsurge in crude oil prices over recent months, which is largely prompted by an OPEC+ failure to meet output targets following an escalation of a decade-long spat between Tehran-backed Yemeni Houthis and a group of Saudi-led Gulf countries backed by the United States, alongside growing tension over Ukraine issue which many analysts had claimed to have exasperated by an incumbent Biden Administration that is reportedly becoming more and more tentative about its geopolitical dominance, might have soared further this year, as China would more likely to spur up imports in a market landscape which has been facing off sharp supply crunches.

Oil prices rocket to fresh seven-year peak

Citing statistics, in the day’s commodity market wind-down, UK crude gained 1.1 per cent to $90.34 a barrel after soaring to an intra-session high of $91.70, the strongest level since October 2014, while US WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude oil futures’ prices jumped 0.6 per cent to $87.12 a barrel after hitting a session high of $88.84 a barrel earlier in the day, the highest in more than seven years.

On the week, US WTI crude gained 2.4 per cent and UK crude oil futures surged 2.6 per cent with both benchmarks scoring their longest streak of weekly gains since October. Meanwhile, as geopolitical risks stretched out on multiple fronts this week which appeared to have provoked by the Biden Administration despite a sharp rise in US oil rig counts, a director of commodity research at ClipperData, Matt Smith said, “some of the air being let out of the tires here on this crude rally.

But the bigger picture here is that with all the geopolitical uncertainty and the supply side concerns, prices are continuing to just get swept along. ”