Crude Oil Futures

  The price of crude oil continues to fall on Friday as the news of the joint release of Strategic Petroleum Reserves, SPRs, started gathering momentum, although there is no official response in this regard from any country involved in the unprecedented move. As of 15:30 GMT, price of WTI and Brent stood at $76.56 and $79.16 respectively – a significant fall, reaching a 7-year-high mark in October; the prices fell almost by 3% The development follows the 3-and-half-hour-long virtual meeting between President Biden and his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping. Although both sides refrained from publishing what was discussed during the relatively long meeting, the Chinese media was upbeat about the improvement of the ties in certain areas of the world’s top two economies. The Chinese media was confident that the current energy crunch was on top of the agenda during the meeting between the two leaders and implied that President Biden suggested the joint release of the strat

  The price of crude oil tumbled on Wednesday in the aftermath of Biden-Xi talks that took place virtually on Tuesday. Although both sides were tight-lipped about what were under discussion during the three-and-half-hour long conversation, the Chinese media started guessing the contents in dribs and drabs. One of the main items that the two leaders discussed was, among other things, according to these sources, the global energy crisis. It goes without saying the damage inflicted on the world’s two large economies due to the current energy crunch, despite one being the largest crude oil producer on the planet. China, in the absence of such nature-luck, is at the mercy of its imports and the steep rise in gas prices created a major energy problem in the country that led to power shortages across the vast nation. The determination of the Chinese authorities to play their role in cutting down on carbon emissions too had an adverse effect on the energy crunch, as the power suppli

An Arctic blast is set to hit the northern Europe in the next few days, making both the temperatures and the continent’s cumulative natural gas supply plummeting in a significant way. The above weather model shows how the extreme weather front is moving across the region in the next few days. The price of the LNG, liquefied natural gas, which had been falling in the last few days from a record high, started going up again in light of the development on the weather front; in addition, it got boosted by the clashes along the border between Belarus and Poland.   At present, Russia and the West are at loggerheads over range of issues and in this context, President Putin’s promise to provide Europe with extra supply of gas may not materialize – according to political analysts. As of 12.40 GMT, the price of LNG was $5.14; the cascading effect was clear in the price of crude oil too: WTI was at $81.45 and Brent at $82.82. Europe is not the only region that is at the mercy of nature

  The price of crude oil has been falling for three successive weeks and analysts attribute it to a series of factors, ranging from strong dollar to loss of consumer confidence, especially in the major economies. When the markets closed on Friday, WTI and Brent stood at $80.79 and $82.17 respectively. Having repeatedly ignored the calls for increased production, the OPEC+ finally admitted this week that the demand for crude oil will shrink while identifying the obvious – the rising energy costs across the world. The rising new Coronavirus infections, the fear of the emergence of a new variant of the virus, acute labour shortages in the West and global supply chain problems do not help maintaining the momentum of the crude oil markets that saw a remarkable recovery in the two month period from September to October. In another development, the prospect of the resumption of the talks between Iran and the signatories to the JCPOA, 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, is also weighing somewha