Oil: The Story Hardly Gets Better After Another Dismal Week By Investing.com – Investing.com

Oil: The Story Hardly Gets Better After Another Dismal Week By Investing.com – Investing.com

© Reuters.

By Barani Krishnan

Investing.com - Another week, and the story in oil is hardly any better.

U.S. crude scraped together a tiny gain for the week, while Brent couldn’t even manage that.

The insistent drone of the Covid narrative, via the Delta variant, and a dismal U.S. consumer reading for August put paid to any comeback by crude prices on Friday.

New York-traded , the benchmark for U.S. oil, settled down 65 cents, or 0.9%, at $68.44 per barrel. For the week, it rose 0.2% — barely a makeup for last week’s 7.7% plunge, which was  its sharpest since October 2020.

London-traded , the global benchmark for oil, settled down 72 cents, or 1%, at $70.59. For the week, Brent fell 0.2%, after last week’s 7.4% drop.

Oil “is in a bit of a no-mans-land and it could take a few days to gather steam for another run,” Phil Flynn, analyst at Chicago’s Price Futures Group, said. “If Covid concerns ease a bit then reports of falling global oil inventories should ignite another rally.”

Flynn’s remarks came after the watchdog for western oil consumers warned on Thursday that Covid’s Delta variant will slow down demand growth for