After changes throughout the week, crude oil prices fell for the second consecutive session, this Friday, February 18, 2022.
Indeed, the price of oil has been lowered, and for good reason the news reporting an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program. However, this fall was triggered by concerns regarding Russian supplies, once morest the backdrop of the current crisis in Ukraine.
North Sea Brent benchmark crude futures for April delivery traded at $92.97, down 1.94%. The barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) in New York, meanwhile, suffered a drop of 2.02% and is at 90.81 dollars for delivery in March.
The head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken at the UN, urged Russia on Thursday to “give up the path of war” by evoking with precision the disastrous consequences of an attack once morest Ukraine.
In addition, dialogue is maintained in Vienna with Iran in order to get Washington to lift the sanctions imposed on Iran, guaranteeing full compliance by Tehran with its commitments and therefore a return to the 2015 nuclear agreement.
It is moreover, this information according to which the United States and Iran would be ready to establish an agreement within the framework of the nuclear negotiations which influences the price of the oil and thus causes its decline, according to Carsten Fritsch, analyst for Commerzbank.
The United States, meanwhile, is hoping for this agreement in order to bring regarding a drop in the cost of oil, knowing that the price of gasoline is on average $ 3.52 per gallon (3.8 liters) , a dollar more than a year ago, according to figures from the American Automobile Association. In California, the state with the highest fuel taxes, the price of gasoline has hit a decades high at $4.72 a gallon.
The crisis in Ukraine is in full swing
For the past week, the state of the crisis in Ukraine is getting bigger. Indeed, while the United States says it fears an “imminent” invasion of Ukraine, Germany qualifies the situation as “critical”.
The United States claims that the Russian invasion will begin with aerial bombardment and therefore “a rapid assault” on Kiev, so it has decided to send 3,000 more troops to Poland to “reassure the allies of the NATO”.
Russia meanwhile continues to prepare for a possible offensive and Moscow assures Saturday that it has started to reduce its diplomatic presence in Ukraine.
Diplomatic exchanges leading to nothing, Western countries decide to act in anticipation of a possible conflict. Saturday evening, Paris advises the French once morest traveling to Ukraine without calling on its nationals to leave Ukraine, unlike the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium.
The airline KLM, of the Air France-KLM group, therefore announces the suspension until further notice of its flights to Ukraine.
