Crude Oil Futures

  With a significant loss of global oil supply in the offing due to sanctions imposed on Russia, the West - and the rest of the world too - are scrambling for alternatives in order to keep the impending supply squeeze at bay. The IEA, International Energy Agency, is predicting that that Russia will lose a quarter of its oil exports in the next few months. “The implications of a potential loss of Russian oil exports to global markets cannot be understated,” said the IEA on Wednesday, adding, “while it is still too early to know how events will unfold, the crisis may result in lasting changes to energy markets.”  IEA, Russian crude and oil product exports, Jan 2020-Dec 2021, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/russian-crude-and-oil-product-exports-jan-2020-dec-2021 With these developments, the highly anticipated days of surplus crude oil, forecast by the OPEC+ and of course, the IEA as well,  last year,  in the markets have vanished into thin air. On the contrary, t

  Despite the relative rise in crude oil prices in the markets in the early hours on Wednesday, the downward trend started continuing once again as the day wears on. As of 10:35 GMT, the prices of WTI and Brent were at $95.62 and $99.13 respectively. The fall in prices on Tuesday, perhaps, may have stemmed from two factors: the revolving optimism over the revival of the JCPOA, 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, was back in the green realm, after Russia’s announcement that it got the written guarantee from the US about its trade dealing within the framework of the JCPOA being exempt from the sanctions; in addition, the API, American Petroleum Institute, reported that there was a significant crude build in the US during the week ending March, 15. The EIA, US Energy Information Administration, will release its own data of the US crude oil inventories on Wednesday. Analysts eagerly await the report to see whether the data from the two agencies forms a consistent pattern in the current circum

  The price of crude oil fell on Monday morning in Asian markets, much to analysts’ surprise, defying the conventional logic. With the Russian oil imports banned in the US and UK and the revival of the JCPOA, 2015 Iran nuclear deal, back in the doldrums, analysts in the realm of crude oil anticipated just the opposite; the price of crude oil, despite the obvious supply woes, however, kept falling when markets opened across the world on Monday. As of 10:30 GMT, the price of WTI and Brent were at $103.55 and $108.08 respectively. To make matters worse, two significant incidents took place in the volatile Middle East at the weekend: Iran launched a missile attack in Iraq, claiming it was targeting an Israeli spy network in the region; Iraq, meanwhile, wanted an answer from its neighbour for violating its sovereignty; in addition, there are signs that political uncertainty in Libya, a major oil producer in the world, may take a turn for the worse – yet again. In short, the crude oi