Oil surges 5 per cent in 6th straight weekly gain on US job data, OPEC+ meet

Both US and UK crude rallied on Friday following a flabbergasting US employment data that revealed the US economy had added 2.5 million jobs in May, leading to a decline of unemployment rate to 13.3 per cent from a record 14.7 per cent a month earlier and insanely beating an analysts’ estimate of a drop of 9 million jobs alongside an uptick in unemployment rate of as much as 20 per cent, which in effect had spurred up investors’ prospects of an earlier-than-anticipated rebound in US economy, though analysts remained sceptical over the pace of recovery given the scale of pandemic-driven downfall the US economy had witnessed over the past three months.

Apart from that, an OPEC+ meet scheduled to take place tomorrow, which has every potentiality to settled down the fate of crude oil futures’ prices for the rest of the year and would likely to bring forward discussions over further output cut, had added to further bullish wing to investors’ optimisms.

Citing statistics, as following Friday’s market round off, both US and UK crude oil futures’ prices had logged in their sixth consecutive week of gains, mostly buoyed up by an uplift in demands alongside sweeping output cuts, the Brent crude futures’ prices reported 19.2 per cent in weekly gain, while the US WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude oil futures’ prices surged 10.7 per cent this week.

Besides, on the day’s commodity market wind down, the US crude settled down 5.7 per cent higher to $39.55 per barrel, while the UK crude soared 5.8 per cent to wrap up the day at $42.30 a barrel. Meanwhile, referring to market participants’ prospects over the upcoming OPEC+ meet alongside a rebound in economic activity, the strongest evidence of which so far could be the unprecedented surge in US non-farm payroll data in May, a senior analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago, Phil Flynn said on the commodity market closure, “OPEC and the U.S.