The price of Texas intermediate oil (WTI) rose 0.3% on Monday to close at US$80.10 a barrel, with the market pending Tropical Storm Idalia, which is expected to be a hurricane upon its arrival on the northwest coast of Florida on Wednesday.
At the close of business on the New York Mercantile Exchange (nymex), WTI futures contracts for October delivery added US$0.27 from the previous day.
Texas has been down for two consecutive weeks and in the last one it lost 1.7% in value, fluctuating around US$80 a barrel. Previously, it had accumulated seven weeks on the rise.
Investors turned their attention to the development of the tropical storm idaliawhich this Monday is expected to become a category 1 hurricane as it passes through Cuba and that on Wednesday it will be a major hurricane, with winds starting at 111 miles per hour (178 km/h), near the northwest coast of Florida.
Idalia could interrupt some operations in the energy sector in the Gulf of Mexico “but the monitoring so far suggests that it will be more of a threat to demand than supply”; Price Futures Group analyst Phil Flynn said in a note on Monday.
Meanwhile, new measures of the government in china -the world’s second largest consumer of crude oil- to stimulate the local market, which include a reduction in the tax on stock transactions or the required solvency margin.
The Minister of Finance and the Tax Administration of China announced yesterday a halving (from 0.1% to 0.05%) of the “stamp duty” -tax charged on share purchase and sale transactions- with the aim of “invigorating the capital market and strengthen investor confidence”.
The quarterly data of the area were also known OECDin which economic growth slowed down slightly in the second quarter, with 0.4%, one tenth less than in the first, with a contrasting evolution among the member countries that reveals a plurality of situations.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Monday in a statement that in year-on-year terms, the gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of June in what is known as the “club of developed countries” was 1.5%, compared to 1.6% at the end of March.
Elsewhere, natural gas futures contracts for October were up less than $0.01 to $2.67, and gasoline futures due the same month were down $0.08 to $2.57.