Oil futures ended Friday’s session with a gain, contributing to a weekly rise of 2% for US benchmark crude prices, Report informs via MarketWatch.
“There is certainly still a geopolitical fear bid in oil markets here with [West Texas Intermediate crude] prices in the low $80s,” Tyler Richey, co-editor at Sevens Report Research, told MarketWatch. “Geopolitical worries have eased from their most tense levels seen earlier in April as the escalation in the Middle East between Israel and Iran has receded back to a still unsettling, but notably more stable level.”
WTI oil for June delivery rose 28 cents, or 0.3%, to settle at $83.85 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, with front-month prices marking their first weekly gain in three weeks. Brent crude for June delivery added 49 cents, or nearly 0.6%, to end at $89.50 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe, up 2.5% for the week.
Without the simmering geopolitical worries, WTI would likely be in the low-to-mid $70-a-barrel range, “at best,” as consumer demand for gasoline has been sliding in recent weeks, while OPEC+ has made no changes to output policy in some time, said Richey.