By Srinivas Chowdary Sunkara // petrobazaar // 2nd March, 2022.
Brent oil futures for May delivery surged $7 or 7.15 pct to settle at $104.97 a barrel on London based ICE futures Europe exchange while WTI oil April futures prices climbed $7.69 or 8.03 % to close at $103.41 a barrel on NYMEX last night. In Shanghai, Crude oil main contract futures prices rose 1.6Yuan to 622.8 Yuan/bbl where as in India, MCX crude oil front month futures prices spiked Rs.569 or 7.78 pct to Rs.7887 a barrel yesterday. Brent premium over WTI narrowed down to $1.56 a barrel during the session.
The world crude oil price index curves continued to hover up as the both the benchmarks prices are climbing the Ukraine war wall of worry. Brent touched highest close since Aug, 2014 while WTI hit highest close since July 2014 and its biggest daily percentage gain since Nov, 2020. Though U.S led sanctions on Russia exempted the energy sector, Traders are shying away from trading Russian barrels that led to big discounts on that oil and tightening supply for other oil which saw spike in their prices. OPEC+ group is scheduled to meet on Wednesday but the group did not signaled desire to boost production beyond their expected 400,000 bpd increase in April. Brent and WTI through October were in 'super-backwardation', With each month trading $1 a barrel below their prior month. Turning to weekly data, API reported that U.S crude supplies fell by 6.1Mb for the week ended Feb 25. The Institute also reported that gasoline supplies declined by 2.5Mb while distillates stocks edged up by 4,00,000 barrels during the week. Today, Asian markets opened in green, adding margins.
Good day to all.
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