Oil started this year with further price gains despite the quick restart of the Forties pipeline and the equally quick repairs of a pipeline in Libya, where a pipeline blast boosted Brent and WTI in the last days of 2017. Usually, such force majeure events are quick to push prices up and down, but this time, only the push up materialized. Sentiment on the oil market is more bullish than it has been for a long time. But how long will this optimism hold? Last week, Bloomberg’s Alex Longley listed five factors to watch this year in oil, among them the OPEC cuts, geopolitical risks, the record-high number of long positions on crude, and of course, U.S. shale. Right now, it’s clear that optimism prevails over any worry that some OPEC members might cheat on their quotas or that Venezuela, for example, could increase its oil production, the chances […]