The price of Petroleum Texas Intermediate (WTI) opened this Friday with a rise of 2.5%, to 98.85 dollars a barrel, due to the low possibility of an increase in OPEC + supply at its meeting next week.
At 0900 local New York time (1300 GMT), WTI futures contracts for delivery in September added $2.43 from the close of the previous session.
Analyst Tom Essaye, in a report by the firm Sevens Report, describes this meeting of the Organization of Exporting Countries of Petroleum (OPEC) and allies led by Russia, known as OPEC+, on August 3.
Other factors capable of moving energy markets in the short term, according to Essaye, are the war in Ukraine and weekly gasoline demand figures from US consumers.
Yesterday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BEA, in English) announced that the US economy contracted 0.2% in the second quarter of the year, thus chaining two quarters of declines in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a result of the global crisis derived from the war in Ukraine and runaway inflation.
This data confirms a second consecutive decline in GDP -in the first quarter it fell by 1.6%-, which is traditionally considered a technical recession.
A diagnosis that, however, is not shared by the US government, which does not believe that the country is in a recession scenario given the robustness of its economy.
Investors have been concerned for months that the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) attempts to rein in rising prices could push the economy closer to a recession.
This week, in addition, the Fed announced a rise in the official interest rate of 0.75 points, the second in the last two months, to try to curb runaway inflation.
“Looking ahead, the outlook for the economy, inflation, and subsequently Federal Reserve (Fed) policy, and how all of those factors come together to affect the odds of a soft landing, will be critical for the equity market. Petroleum in the next sessions”, adds the expert. EFE
