(London) After a first half of European session in the red, oil prices started to rise again on Tuesday as the fundamentals – supply contained and demand which is picking up – are strong and able to eclipse any bearish episode.
At around 8:15 a.m., the price of a barrel of North Sea Brent for delivery in December, listed in London, gained 0.24% from Monday’s close at $ 86.20.
In New York, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for the same month appreciated 0.39% to 84.09 dollars.
The two benchmark contracts were approaching their previous multi-year records reached the day before: WTI had then forayed above $ 85 for the first time since October 2014 and Brent had flirted with its previous high of 2018.
“Tight supply and ever-increasing demand” are the main driver of oil prices, says Naeem Aslam, analyst at Avatrade.
The postponement of part of the demand for gas and coal, the prices of which rose sharply as winter approached in the Northern Hemisphere, also contributed to the rising environment for crude prices.
Pushing this argument, Goldman Sachs analysts estimated in a note Sunday that the price of Brent could exceed $ 90 by the end of the year.
The announcement of a meeting between Iran and the European Union combined with profit taking had somewhat ballasted crude prices earlier in the day.
The Iranian vice-minister in charge of the nuclear issue Ali Baghéri will indeed meet this week in Brussels with European negotiator Enrique Mora to discuss a resumption of negotiations in Vienna, the spokesperson for the head of diplomacy told AFP on Monday. European.
Suspended since June, these negotiations between the Islamic Republic on one side and Germany, the United Kingdom, China, France and Russia on the other, aim to save the agreement concluded in 2015 that is supposed to prevent Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons, before the United States unilaterally denounced it in May 2018.
If the negotiations were to be successful, the easing of sanctions would lead to the return to the market of a large volume of black gold, which is currently under embargo.