Several energy companies in Denmark have already announced that this winter could result in record-high bills for consumers. The predicted high prices are also reflected in the current oil price. Thus, North Sea oil reached a small milestone at the beginning of this week by costing over 80 USD, and on Tuesday the price per barrel was 82.56 USD, which is the highest since October 2018.
The price of American WTI oil has also grown sharply and has also almost reached 79 USD per barrel this week. This is the highest level since November 2014.
The high prices have been particularly promoted by a meeting among the OPEC+ countries on Monday. Here, the organization chose, against expectations, to maintain its policy from July of 'merely' increasing production by 400,000 barrels of oil per day each month to phase out the previous production cut of 5.8 million. barrels per day, which was adopted to overcome the collapse in oil prices at the beginning of the corona crisis.
The OPEC+ countries continue to fear that a new wave of corona could reduce demand. It was this decision that sent North Sea oil above 80 USD per barrel on Tuesday.
However, both North Sea oil and WTI oil have lost their steam a little on Wednesday and early on Thursday. Partly because Russian President Vladimir Putin has floated the possibility of increasing Russian exports of natural gas to Europe to record levels to ease the current energy crisis, writes Bloomberg.
That announcement, together with an unexpected increase in US oil inventories, has meant that North Sea oil is currently trading at 79.44 USD per barrel, while a barrel of WTI oil can be purchased for 75.29 USD, according to figures from oilprice.com.
Overall, the price of oil has only gone one way throughout 2021 and has increased by over 50 percent. since the beginning of the year, when the price of North Sea and WTI oil was respectively 51.8 and 48.52 USD per barrel.
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