Even as Baker Hughes reported a rise in the number of active drilling rigs in the United States on Friday, oil prices continued to see gains on Friday afternoon. At 4:19pm EDT, WTI crude was still up 1.32% on the day at $56.97. Brent was still up over 1% on the day, at $59.44—dangerously close to the $60 psychological threshold for the benchmark. Last week at this time, the spot price for Brent was just $55.04. The near $5 gain is due to a combination of factors, including a large crude oil inventory decrease in the United States, continuing OPEC+ production restraint, Aramco’s price hike to crude for Europe, U.S. traders drunk on stimulus chatter, and whispers of an overall tightening oil market. These are bullish signals indeed. But can this uptrend last amid lockdown extensions and oil demand that just isn’t there yet? When a stimulus deal is […]