Daily Times

Maintaining their losing streak for the seventh straight week, oil futures fell down amid uncertainty over future demand despite the Opec+ alliance of oil producing countries deciding on capping crude output next year to support the market. Major global benchmark Brent ended the week lower by 3.85 percent. Brent, the international benchmark for two-thirds of the world’s oil, fell down to $75.84 a barrel from $78.88 a barrel during the week, showing another decrease of $3.04 on a week-on-week (WoW) basis. Other global benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the main oil benchmark for North America, closed the week down to $71.23 from $74.07 a barrel, registering a weekly decline of $2.84 (-3.83 percent). The last time WTI booked a seven-week losing streak was five years ago. Saudi Arabia and Russia, the world’s two biggest oil exporters, on Thursday called for all OPEC+ members to join an agreement on output cuts just days after a fractious meeting of the producers’ club. The OPEC+ last week agreed to a combined 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd) in output cuts for the first quarter of next year; however, oil prices have fallen by about 10 percent since OPEC+ announced the output cuts.