Crude Oil Futures

  The price of crude oil recorded a relatively sharp fall on Wednesday, defying the ‘prophesies’ of certain investment banks. As of 16:00 GMT, the price of WTI and Brent stood at $80.82 and $82.04 respectively, a fall of more than 3%. The key reasons behind the fall of oil price may be the following: China’s weak economic data for eight successive months The fall of US crude inventories for six successive weeks The tremendous pressure brought upon the OPEC+ members to increase the oil output The flare-ups of the Delta variant – or sub variant – of the Covid-19 in many parts of the world As for China’s economy, the authorities did not hide the fact that its economy continues to slow down, hit by supply chain issues, rising energy costs, power shortages and rising unemployment numbers. China’s manufacturing PMI index fell by 0.4%, from 49.6% in September to 49.2% in October, according to the National Statistics Bureau of Statistics of China; it has been in decline for month

  The probability of reviving the JCPOA, 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, appears to be heading towards the statistical minimum at present, judging by the rhetoric from the new Iranian administration led by President Raisi and the latest US position highlighted by none other than President Biden on Sunday. When the new US administration came to power, Iran showed some flexibility in reviving the deal and there were a few rounds of talks in this regard in Vienna, Austria. It was, however, when President Rouhani was in power as the president of Iran; at some point during the negotiations, Mr Rouhani even said that the revival was imminent that, unfortunately, turned out to be a false dawn. With the arrival of the new administration led by President Raisi, the Iranian position gradually evolved into a hardened stage, reaching a peak recently; Iran now wants the sanctions to be lifted before any negotiations to start. Iran’s foes in the region, in the meantime, lost no time in grabbing the

  Although the price of crude oil went slightly down this week, having reached a seven-year-high value, analysts do not anticipate a precipitous fall in the coming weeks, especially when the winter is on the horizon as far as many industrialized nations are concerned. As of 18:00 GMT on Friday, the two main benchmarks, WTI and Brent, stood at $84 and $84 respectively, slightly lower than what they were, a week ago. The seed for the sudden occurrence of an energy crunch was the cumulative global anxiety over the supply of fuel for power plants. As the wind turbines could not provide the power expected of them in ‘windless’ summer, power companies started to run helter-skelter in search of substitutes to generate power. During the pandemonium, there was not enough coal in stock, having been pilloried as the worst of all fossil fuels. Since the demand far outweighed supply, power companies turned to gas as an alternative that in turn caused a massive rise in gas prices, with the gap