Oil rig rise, financial markets stabilising, geopolitical risk premium up

By A/S Global Risk Management.

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Updated on 12 Feb 2018 09:43 GMT

Oil prices dropped sharply end-of-day Friday and Brent briefly fell below $62 as the weekly oil rig count from Baker Hughes showed a whopping 26 rigs were added in the U.S. last week. Along with increased number of oil rigs, the U.S. oil production increased and surpassed 10 mio. barrels per day last week, which weighed on prices. At time of writing, Brent oil price is higher, around $63.5 likely due to combination of improved financial market sentiment and increased geopolitical risk premium. Over the weekend, an Israeli fighter jet was brought down over Syria and Israel consequently carried out retaliation air strikes. It remains unclear if the conflict escalates further which is the main fear for now. Today, OPEC will release its monthly oil market outlook and tomorrow, the IEA monthly report is published, both could entail some market jitters. Turning to economic data front, today sees a couple of UK central bank speeches, later this week, Japanese, German and Eurozone GDPs along with U.S. retail sales data are published. Asia is heading into Lunar New Year from Thursday.

A/S Global Risk Management is a provider of customised hedging solutions for the management of price risk on fuel expenses. The company has offices in Denmark and Singapore. For further details about its risk management products and services, please call +45 88 38 00 00 or email hedging@global-riskmanagement.com.