WTI, Brent Settle Higher on Friday, Lower for the Week

OilBarrelsArrowUp

Oil futures ended slightly higher on Friday, while crude experienced its largest weekly loss since early February, according to a Bloomberg MarketWatch report.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, August West Texas Intermediate crude rose 27 cents, or 0.6%, to end trading at $45.41 a barrel. Prices fell 7.3% overall for the week.

On London’s ICE Futures Exchange, September Brent crude climbed 36 cents, or 0.8%, to settle at $46.76 a barrel. For the week, it was down almost 7%.

“Trouble was brewing in the oil trade [with] poor support for prices in much of the session,” said Richard Hastings, macro strategist at Seaport Global Securities, referencing Thursday’s trading, when WTI crude futures ended down 4.8% and Brent lost 4.9%.

“Petroleum product volumes are too high, and our exports cannot grow sufficiently, or fast enough, to adjust this,” said Hastings. “Throw in some evidence of a few more rigs, then the story turns to more U.S. onshore production, not less.”

On Friday, Baker Hughes reported the number of active U.S. oil rigs rose by 10 to 351 in the latest week. That’s the fifth weekly climb in the past six weeks.

“Lower petroleum prices and refiner margin pressures are pushing back upon crude oil, infecting crude oil itself from multiple other directions,” said Hastings. “There is hope for a better situation in 2017, but this is only the middle of 2016. West Texas Intermediate prices could revisit the lower $40s before some stability returns.”

Meanwhile, August natural gas tacked on 2.4 cents, or 0.9% to settle at $2.801 per million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange, marking a weekly decline of 6.2%.