Bad news at the time of departures for the holidays, fuel prices are starting to rise again. Oil companies and distributors will in fact pass on the increase in the price of a barrel, which is at its highest for two months. In London, a barrel of Brent, the benchmark oil from the North Sea, is trading at $86.60 for delivery in September, or 6.1% more than at the end of May. And 12.4% since January 1. At the beginning of last summer, Brent was trading well below that, at around $74.5 per barrel. The same trend is observed in New York: the futures price of a barrel of “light sweet crude”, for delivery in August, is trading at $83.54, a level 16.3% higher than that of January 1, while the national holiday of July 4, a public holiday in the United States, is fast approaching and, with it, the start of the summer vacation season. The famous “driving season”. This week, a record number of motorists, 60 million, are expected to take to the road according to the American Automobile Association (AAA). “This figure could increase over the next ten days,” adds the AAA. The refineries should therefore be operating at full capacity.
The rise in oil prices is also a result of tensions between Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah, which have raised fears of a wider war in the Middle East. On Monday, Israel struck the southern Gaza Strip after Palestinian fighters fired 20 rockets into its territory. The prospect of higher oil demand from China, the world’s largest crude importer, has also been a factor. The S&P Global PMI showed that Chinese factory activity grew for the eighth straight month in June, reaching a level not seen in more than three years.
