The price of WTI crude oil futures are closing/settling up $3.34 or 3.27% at $105.36. The report early today that Germany is no longer pose to an embargo on Russian oil. The result could be a further tightening of global supplies. Germany would look to find ways to replace Russian oil with other supply. Germany imported about one third of its oil from Russia before the invasion of Ukraine. The German economic minister Habeck recently said that the import about 25% currently.
Yesterday Russia cut off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria after they refused to pay in rubles.
OPEC meets again on May 5 and are expected to keep the 400,000 additional barrels per month schedule in place.
Looking at the hourly chart above, the price earlier today moved above its 200 hour moving average at 102.44. That moving average was broken earlier in the session but failed only to revisit and surge through the level with momentum in the North American session.
The price has since extended above swing lows and highs going back to earlier this month between $105.23 and $105.40. The settle price was between those two levels. Move above and traders would start to talk about targeting the swing high from April 18 at $109.20.
