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Oil prices stabilize – news.ORF.at

Oil prices stabilized at the end of a historic week for the crude oil market. Despite slight losses, the situation on the market has calmed down. At midday today, a barrel (159 liters) of North Sea Brent was $ 21.30. That was 33 cents less than the day before. The US variety WTI was traded at $ 16.14 per barrel. It was 53 cents less than yesterday.

At the beginning of the week, something unique had happened on the oil market: For the first time, the price of a futures contract on oil had fallen into negative territory. The event is the result of an unprecedented slump in demand due to the coronavirus crisis and a much too high supply of crude oil with insufficient storage capacity.

Critical situation “not survived”

Nothing has changed in this situation until the end. The fact that oil prices have risen somewhat since midweek is due to political tensions between the United States and Iran. The background to this is an incident at sea that prompted US President Donald Trump to launch military threats. Iran reacted similarly.

“The critical situation on the oil market is not over,” commented the German raw materials specialist Eugen Weinberg from Commerzbank. There are numerous risks on the demand side and in the available storage capacities. However, one can have hope that the recent turbulence has caused rethinking among traders, producers and financial investors and has ensured a more stable price trend.

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