the Globe News
The hegemony of oil in the world energy matrix has its years, decades, numbered. But the market has saved the biggest match ball in its history: in April of last year the pandemic led the US reference to trade in negative —the world upside down: you paid to get rid of barrels and not to buy them— and the search for storage space for the crude oil that was pumped and not consumed due to the lockdowns became the main struggle between the main players in the sector.
Less than a year later, the situation has taken a radical turn: both the brent European like the Texas The US trade today at its highest level since January of last year, days before the covid-19 officially claimed its first death in China.
The latest boost came this Thursday, when the main exporting countries agreed against all odds to maintain their production. Everything has changed since then and the GDP has suffered - on both sides of the Atlantic: Asia is another world - its biggest debacle since the Second World War, but oil follows its own path.
The market had been discounting for days that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) expanded, better known as OPEC +, would opt this Thursday for a moderate increase in production from April. But the cartel, always under the baton of its two most influential members —Saudi Arabia and Russia— had an ace up its sleeve: its decision to keep pumping intact, this has upset any previous forecast and has led crude oil to score its best session in weeks, with a rise of more than 4% in both brent and texas. The first already far exceeds 65 dollars and the second, 60.
With demand recovering by force in the heat of the lifting of mobility restrictions, a stable supply leads one to think of a much tighter market than in recent times, when pumping has repeatedly exceeded consumption. El País newspaper source
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