Oil prices are falling on Friday after rising to two-week highs in the previous session.
Brent crude futures on London’s ICE Futures exchange traded at 7:05 a.m. on Friday stood at $84.52 a barrel, down $0.23 (0.27%) from the previous session’s closing price. Those contracts rose $0.44 (0.5%) to $84.75 a barrel on Thursday.
The price of WTI April futures at electronic trades of NYMEX fell by $0.2 (0.26%) to $77.96 per barrel by that time. At the end of previous session the cost of contracts grew by $0.47 (0.6%) up to $78.16 per barrel.
Both Brent and WTI contracts finished the week with growth thanks to optimism caused by signals that activity is recovering in China, which outweighs concerns of traders related to the ongoing tightening of monetary policy in the USA.
The resilience of the U.S. economy and labor market in particular leaves the Federal Reserve (Fed) with room to maneuver for further rate hikes, and that supports the U.S. dollar, which in turn is a negative factor for commodity markets.
In addition to these two factors, traders are trying to assess the dynamics of Russian oil exports, which so far has remained more resilient than expected in the face of sanctions imposed on Russia, Bloomberg notes.
