Oil prices moved closer to a two-month high on Friday, closing out the week with some of the strongest gains in 2017. Market sentiment has turned “cautiously optimistic,” as Goldman Sachs put it, with rebalancing efforts starting to become more clear. Crude oil inventories continue to decline, and the latest EIA figures show a massive 7.2 million-barrel drawdown for the week ending on July 21, suddenly plunging U.S. inventories back into the upper end of the five-year average range. Data from the past month or so has dispelled fears that the oil market was poised to suffer another meltdown, perhaps below $40 per barrel. Instead, Brent is back up above $50 per barrel for the first time in two months, and WTI is hovering just below that range as well. “While OPEC’s production path remains uncertain, recent fundamental oil data have come in even better than we had expected,” […]