New York. The price of Texas Intermediate Oil (WTI) fell 1.8% yesterday Thursday and closed at 104.27 dollars due to fears that a possible slowdown in economic activity will cause a drop in demand in the energy market.
At the end of operations on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex), WTI futures contracts for delivery in August lost 1.92 dollars compared to the previous close.
After yesterday’s decline, WTI crude is at its lowest level since May 10. Investors are assessing the chances that central banks could push the world economy into recession as they try to curb inflation with interest rate hikes. The president of the Federal Reserve (Fed) of the United States, Jerome Powell, admitted yesterday that the organization he leads erroneously estimated the risk of high inflation. In addition, Powell did not rule out that interest rate hikes to reduce inflation could lead to higher unemployment.
In the middle of this month, the Fed announced a rise in the official interest rate of 0.75 points, the largest increase in 28 years, and anticipated that another increase of 0.75 or 0.5 points would most likely take place in July to fight inflation.
Meanwhile, the price of natural gas futures contracts for July fell 62 cents to almost 6.24 dollars and gasoline futures contracts due in July fell almost 7 cents to 3.76 dollars a gallon.
