Crude Oil Futures

  The price of crude oil has lost its upward momentum on Tuesday, but still remains relatively high in light of growing demand for the commodity. On Monday, there was a substantial increase in the price of natural gas, LNG, and in proportion, the price of crude oil went up too.   The price of LNG, however, fell on Tuesday, putting a drag on surging crude oil prices. Analysts are worried about the impact on the crude oil demand in the US, the world’s largest consumer, due to the steep rise in Covid-19 cases, as the optimism that stemmed from the relative success of the nationwide vaccine campaign started to wane. In this context, they are watching the latest data on the US crude inventories, scheduled to be released by the API, American Petroleum Institute, today. Since November 2021, according to the data from the API, the inventories have been falling, sometimes exceeding the weekly estimates of the former. If the trend is not broken, it is encouraging news for both investo

As the US crude oil inventories have been falling consistently since November, new concerns have been growing in the same proportion about the scale of the challenges, when it comes to meeting the mounting demand. The unrest in Kazakhstan, the former Soviet Republic in Central Asia, the worsening situation in the Libyan oil sector due to the influence of competing militia groups for dominance, Nigeria’s inability to sticking to its OPEC+ quota due to endemic problems at loading facilities have exacerbated the potential disruptions in the supply chain. The failure of some members of the OPEC+ in contributing the quota agreed upon by the members surfaced in the recent monthly meeting of the block too; in short, although the members, in principle, agreed to increase the daily output by 400,000 barrels, in practice, it had not materialised in the past; nor will it work that way either in the near future, judging by the news that comes from the member nations. Even Russia faced mounti