Oil prices fell to a six-week low on Friday amid demand concerns after Austria announced a nationwide lockdown.
But for consumers looking for some relief at the pump, the declines are not yielding any immediate lower fuel prices. The national average for a gallon of gas stood around a seven-year high of $3.41 on Friday, according to AAA.
The U.S. benchmark for oil sank more than 4% to a session low of $75.37, a price not seen since 7 October. Crude traded in the green earlier in the US session, but fell into the negative territory following news of Austria\u2019s lockdowns.
The demand rebound has been a key driver of oil\u2019s recovery this year, and any indication that it might ease will ignite traders\u2019 fears.
A move below $80 could deepen the correction, perhaps pulling the price back towards the mid-$70 region.
The December futures contract expires today, with the more actively traded contract for January delivery dipping 3.8% to $75.44 per barrel. Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, traded as low as $78.15 for the first time since 1 October.
Both WTI and Brent are on track for a fourth straight week of losses, which is the longest weekly losing streak since March 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices fell to a six-week low on Friday amid demand concerns after Austria announced a nationwide lockdown.But for consumers looking for some relief at the pump, the declines are not yielding any immediate lower fuel prices. The national average for a gallon of gas stood around a seven-year high of $3.41 on Friday, according …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":53340,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,36],"tags":[8091,7156,7436,7523,7543],"class_list":["post-55285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-commodities-news","category-market-updates","tag-austria","tag-brent","tag-crude-oil","tag-lockdown","tag-west-texas-intermediate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55285"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55291,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55285\/revisions\/55291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}