(Updates Wednesday's oil story, adds further analysis) Crude oil for July delivery rebounded strongly to a six month high at the New York Mercantile Exchange this week, despite an Opec meeting on Thursday May 28 that left production quotas unchanged.
By Friday morning London time, Light Sweet Crude was quoted on screens as high as $65.60 a barrel, meaning that the front month futures price has now doubled since its low of $32.70 in February.
It was not the Opec meeting that drove the price this week, however, but two sets of comments from Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi, who said optimism was returning to the world economy and oil prices could rise to $75-$80 a barrel this year. The comments were taken to mean that Opec did not believe it needed to try and lower the oil price to help the economy revive.
As usual, the...