Oil prices rose again Friday to their highest levels in more than a week as a weaker U.S. dollar boosted commodity prices in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s latest batch of economic and interest rate projections.
Price action
-
West Texas Intermediate crude for January
CL00,
+0.46%CL.1,
+0.46%
gained 48 cents, or 0.7%, to $72.05 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. -
February Brent crude
BRN00,
+0.42%BRNG24,
+0.42%,
the global benchmark, gained 49 cents, or 0.6%, to $77 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. -
January gasoline
RBF24,
+0.95%
gained 0.7% to $2.13 a gallon, while January heating oil
HOF24,
+1.44%
rose by 1.2% to $2.62 a gallon on Nymex. -
Natural gas for January delivery
NGF24,
+1.55%
gained 1.5% to $2.43 per million British thermal units.
Market drivers
Oil prices have rebounded this week following their worst streak of losses since 2018. Commodity-market experts have largely attributed the move to a combination of short-covering and a weaker U.S. dollar.
The dollar has fallen 1.7% since the start of the week against major currencies, based on the move in the ICE U.S. Dollar Index
DXY,
a popular gauge of the greenback’s performance. The dollar was paring some of these declines early Friday, with the index trading 0.3% higher at 102.22.
Most of the drop followed Wednesday’s Fed press conference, where the latest batch of official projections showed the central bank penciling in three interest-rate cuts next year.
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