Oil Posts Monthly Gain as Market Strength, OPEC+ Stay in Focus
(Bloomberg) -- Oil posted a second straight monthly gain as physical markets show signs of strength and traders look ahead to OPEC+ potentially extending its supply cuts.Â
West Texas Intermediate settled little changed above $78 a barrel, up 3.4% since the end of January. February's incremental advance comes amid multiple signals of a strong physical market. WTI's prompt spread stood at 74 cents a barrel in backwardation, indicating tightening supplies, compared with a bearish contango structure earlier this month.Â
Gauges such as the WTI cash roll have also strengthened. The roll, which reflects supply-demand balances at Cushing, Oklahoma, climbed to the highest in more than a year.
Oil's back-to-back monthly advances have pushed prices to the upper end of this year's tight trading band. The climb has been supported by supply cuts from OPEC and its allies, and the group is widely expected to prolong the reductions into the second quarter.Â
Earlier this month, crude rallied to the highest price in 2024 as investors weighed escalating geopolitical risks in the Middle East, an area that supplies a third of the world's crude. Attacks on merchant ships in the to Red Sea have buoyed crude and helped strengthen US physical markets as foreign buyers turn to American oil to avoid shipping issues.Â
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
-
Love, Sex Aur Dhokha: The Audacious Plot To Spy On Jensen Huang
A Taipei dinner, a Singapore chip buyer and a suspected Chinese asset: inside the alleged spy operation that got close to NVIDIA's Jensen Huang.
-
Ten Things I Learnt This Samvat
Patience can be a trap. Cheap stocks can stay cheap. Leverage can wipe you out. What did Samvat 2082 teach us? Niraj Shah writes on 10 lessons from the year gone by.
-
Talking Points This Week: Tech Nerves, FII Buying, And A Faraway Banking Shock
The global markets are not shining this Diwali. The exception in the large markets is, India.
-
Midterm Rally Lasted A Day. The Hard Reality Of A Divided US May Last Two Years | Opinion
Between a contested AI boom, a debt ceiling that arrives in 2027 and a president with every incentive to act alone, the next two years may prove more volatile than the first day's rally suggests.
-
Blue Wave Will Derail the AI Trade but Won't Dismantle the AI Era | Unhedged Position
The Democrats' sweep of the US Congress will see politics collide with economic forces both over the long and short term.
-
It's Time To Take The GST Council's Bet On Trust Global
Payment records can prove India's services exports, and clear, proportionate rules can bring foreign digital sellers into the tax net.
-
Opinion | India at 38: From Innovation Overperformer to Innovation Powerhouse
India now has 453 VC-backed deep science startups, 18 of them late-stage, after 117 percent growth since 2020. Laurus Labs, at USD 9.3 billion, is the most valuable deep science company in any middle-income economy outside China.
-
Navigating Energy Crossroads: S Jaishankar's Call For Diversified Supply Chains At G20 Ministerial Meeting
As geopolitical fault lines continue to test maritime trade routes and commodity flows, Jaishankar's message remains pertinent: true economic resilience requires open markets, protected transit lines, and a genuine commitment to multilateral cooperation rather than coercion.
-
Indians Are Travelling, But Not Every Journey Is A Holiday | The Week In Whys
Pilgrims, patients and working women are the real travellers, and the system hasn't quite caught up with them.
