This Thursday, March 3, is being a constant bombardment of information related to the price of fuel. And the simple and short answer is this: gasoline and diesel They are more expensive than ever. And everything looks like we will pay them even more expensive.
In its weekly report on fuel prices, the European Commission has placed gasoline at 1,609 euros/liter in our country. Diesel is already at 1,497 euros/litre. These are the highest prices on record in our country.
And to these figures is added the price of the Brent Barrel, which today has flirted with the 120 dollars at first hour of the morning. Specifically, it has stood at 119.72 euros per barrel. In just one week, the price has become 21.13 euros more expensive than the price per barrel at its daily highs.
A “self-punishment”
We already looked back with nostalgia at that February 14 when we told you that a barrel of Brent had exceeded 95 dollars, the highest price since September 2014. And these prices were prior to the start of the War between Russia and Ukraine. The war conflict is also noticeable in oil.
And it is that Russia exports around five million barrels of crude oil per day and another three million barrels already refined. Barrels that are not finding a buyer due to the sanctions that Europe is imposing for his actions against Ukraine. In other words, the very sanctions that European countries are imposing on Russia are inflating the price of oil. In Bloomberg they calculate that, at least, two million barrels do not find a buyer and that five million can be reached soon.
In fact, discounts of up to 18.60 dollars per barrel have been established on the Brent index, the benchmark in the market. A much higher figure than the usual discounts, which are usually around two dollars per barrel.
The future is not encouraging
Undoubtedly, this situation will further raise the price of a barrel of Brent, which can reach 150 dollars, according to the forecasts of the same economic medium, but they are not the only ones. Some forecasts that arrived before the explosion of the war and that found their meaning in the bull market.
The increase in demand derived from an increase in displacement as the different lockdowns due to the pandemic have ended and the Russian situation is giving rise to the purchase of oil futures options. These have multiplied by 15 in the last year and large investors who anticipate losing money are forced to buy a new more expensive purchase to protect themselves. It is an effect similar to the case of the “shorts” and Gamestop that we experienced a year ago.
CHART OF THE DAY: Oil traders continue to pile up their bets on $100-plus Brent crude, with the open interest for Dec 2022 call options at $100, $110, $125 and $150 a barrel increasing further and further | #OOTT I wrote about the trend a few days ago: https://t.co/YSDsGDhjzU pic.twitter.com/pe96t6ucWA
– Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) February 21, 2022
And the photography of the future does not look good at all. The International Energy Agency has warned that global energy security is threatened, despite 60 million barrels have been released of energy reserves. This would only compensate for a month’s consumption, taking into account the minimum two million barrels that Russia cannot place each day.
If it reached 150 dollars per barrel, it would have surpassed the all-time high reached by this reference index, which in June 2008 stood at 146.34 dollars per barrel for Brent. Some analysts blamed that rise on speculation in the futures market, a trend that is also being noticed this time.
Photo | Mary Lupan
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism