Oil prices rushed up this morning, when China released good reports on its economy. The strong data led to the recovery of the global economy and increase in fuel demand.
To put it more precisely, May futures for Brent increased by 0.72% and hit $ 69.72. Last Friday, these contracts sank by 0.6% and closed at $ 69.22 per barrel.
Meanwhile, April futures for WTI rose by 0.84% and reached $ 66.16 per barrel. Last Friday, these contracts fell by 0.6% and dipped to $ 65.61 per barrel.
But in terms of weekly statistics, Brent fell by 0.2%, while WTI slipped by 0.7%.
As noted above, the main reason for today's growth is the very strong statistics from China. According to the indicators, industrial production in the country increased by 35.1% year-on-year, following the 7.3% increase in the previous month. Such a confident jump has surpassed even the most daring forecasts of analysts, who predicted an increase in the indicator by only 30%. At the same time, oil demand last January-February soared by almost 17%, hitting up to 13.326 million barrels per day. Analysts believe this will continue amid growing consumption of aviation fuel.
Another unexpected reason was the growth in retail sales. In February, it reached 33.78%, after falling by 4.78% a month earlier.
But the most important factor was the improving outlook on demand, along with the reduction in supply caused by OPEC's production cuts. Experts believe that the aggregate of statistics this week may be the primary confirmation of the global economic recovery.