Oil prices are rising Monday morning, recovering from last week’s sharp decline.
The price of April futures on London’s ICE Futures Exchange stood at $83.38 a barrel by 7:05 a.m., $0.38 (0.46%) above the previous session’s closing price. Those contracts fell by $2.14 (2.5%) to $83 a barrel at the close of trading last Friday.
The price of WTI futures for March at the electronic exchange of New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) by that time is $76.68 per barrel, which is $0.34 (0.45%) above the final value of the previous session. At that time the contract went down in price by $2.15 (2.7%) to $76.34 per barrel.
Brent was down by 3.9% and WTI by 4.2% at the end of last week. The main negative factor for world markets, including oil market, was tough rhetoric of representatives of major central banks of the world, which increased the likelihood of new rate hikes, writes MarketWatch.
“Oil has been caught between a hammer and anvil, or in other words, between the Fed and a hard landing,” said SPI Asset Management managing partner Stephen Innes.
Meanwhile, the number of active oil rigs in the U.S. fell by two last week to 607, oil services company Baker Hughes reported. The number of gas rigs increased by one unit to 151.
Trading volume on Monday is likely to be lower than usual as U.S. exchanges are closed in observance of Presidents’ Day.
