Oil futures were lower Friday, prompting U.S. prices to turn lower for the week, following the news that President Donald Trump told reporters that he called the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and told members to lower the crude prices of oil.
“Gasoline prices are coming down. I called up OPEC, I said you’ve got to bring them down. You’ve got to bring them down,” Trump told reporters Friday, according to Reuters.
Earlier this week, prices for U.S. and global benchmark crude had marked their highest settlements in nearly six months.
“Clearly, prices had been technically ‘overbought’ and a correction of some sort was imminent. It remains to be seen how far oil prices will fall given the still supportive market conditions, with the OPEC+ group of producers continuing to restrict supply and the U.S. government tightening sanctions against Iran,” said Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at Forex.com.
On top of this, you have ongoing production outages from Venezuela and [Thursday] an important pipeline in Russia had to be suspended due to some contamination,” he said. “Thus, if oil prices were to weaken further, this would either have to be due to renewed fears over demand, perhaps from emerging markets given the U.S. dollar rally, or concerns about rising supply in the U.S.”
U.S.-based West Texas Intermediate crude for June delivery CLM9,-3.82% fell $2.21, or 3.4%, to $62.98 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. WTI on Tuesday scratched $66.30, which is the highest settlement for a front-month contract since Oct. 29, FactSet data show, before the market turned south for consecutive sessions. At current intraday prices, WTI was looking at a weekly finish just in the red, down 1.7%.
June Brent crude LCOM9,-3.78the global benchmark, fell $2.40, or 3.3%, at $71.23 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. Before Thursday’s drop, front-month contract prices for the global benchmark climbed in each of the previous four sessions and settled Wednesday are the highest since late October. This is the most-active Brent crude contract was trading down by nearly 0.1% for the week.
Lakewood High School’s very own Kaleb Weiss said, ” This is cool, I wish I had that type of authority.”
