By Adedapo Adesanya
Oil settled higher on Friday as worries about supply from the Middle East mounted and as reining outages tightened refined products markets.
Brent crude futures gained 56 cents or 0.7 per cent to sell at $82.19 a barrel and the US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose by 62 cents or 0.8 per cent to at $76.84 a barrel.
Both oil futures were up about 6 per cent on a week-on-week basis after increasing throughout the week, buoyed after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of a Hamas ceasefire proposal on Wednesday.
He also said the only way to end was through a victory for Israel, a comment that traders noted would increase premium on risks.
On Thursday, the bombing of the southern border city of Rafah helped boost oil prices by around 3 per cent, and the next day, Israeli forces continued deadly air strikes on the Gaza Strip.
US President Joe Biden said Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks by Hamas militants was “over the top” and said the country would not support any military operation mounted in Rafah without due consideration for civilians.
On the supply front, Ukraine launched drone attacks against two oil refineries in southern Russia on Friday, resulting in a fire at the Ilsky refinery and the Afipsky refinery.
Russia has been exporting more crude in February than planned under the supply cut deal of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, OPEC+, following a combination of drone attacks and technical outages at its refineries.
The US Treasury Department also sanctioned another three entities based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and one tanker registered by Liberia for violating a cap placed on the price of Russian oil by a coalition of Western nations.
US energy firms also added four oil and natural gas rigs to make it 623 this week, its highest since mid-December, data from energy services firm Baker Hughes said.
Dipo Olowookere