Oil Trapped In Narrow Price Band | OilPrice.com - OilPrice.com
Oil prices appear to be trapped within a relatively narrow range, squeezed between competing forces on both the upside and downside. There is no shortage of news, but WTI is stuck between $50 and $60, and Brent is stuck between $60 and $70. Obviously, nothing is ever static in the oil market, and the one truism about oil is that volatility can and will return. But for now, oil is range-bound, supported by supply outages, OPEC+ cuts and geopolitical unrest on the one hand, but capped by weak demand and a looming return of surplus on the other. “Oil markets have been becalmed within tight ranges amid falling volatility,” Standard Chartered wrote in a note. “While front-month Brent has settled higher on seven of the past eight trading days, the pace of the ascent has been glacial.” Opposing forces are keeping crude prices in place. The threat to the Strait of Hormuz is old news by now, and the markets are not overly concerned about a possible outage. Iran and the UK, each with their o