Oil futures finished with a loss Monday, though with signs of a recovery in energy demand contributing to a fourth straight monthly gain for U.S. benchmark crude.
Prices had found support early Monday after data showed a stronger-than-expected pickup in China’s service sector, then moved broadly lower and uncertainty continues to surround the outlook for demand. “The uptrend has clearly lost momentum since the early stages of the Q2 rebound,” said Tyler Richey, co-editor at Sevens Report Research. However, “the path of least resistance is still higher right now as technical support has been built out” in the low $40 a barrel level. “That key support area should hold barring another massive demand shock like we saw during the early 2020 global lockdowns,” he told Market Watch.
On Monday, West Texas Intermediate crude for October delivery rose 36 cents, or 0.8%, to settle at $42.61 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The new front-month November Brent crude contract ended 53 cents, or 1.2%, lower at $45.28 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.
Based on the most actively traded contracts, U.S. benchmark WTI crude saw a monthly gain of 5.8%, which represented a fourth straight monthly climb, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Brent, the global benchmark, notched a nearly 4.6% rise for the month to tally a fifth monthly climb in a row. Oil’s monthly gains have accompanied a global rally in equities that has the U.S. market on track for its strongest monthly gain in more than three decades. The latest move for oil prices follow “moderate week-on-week gains during last week’s trading, with continued improvement to global demand levels combining with a weaker dollar and ongoing supply cuts to offer support to [a] market that still holds plenty of downside risk,” said Robbie Fraser, senior commodity analyst at Schneider Electric.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies, known as the OPEC+ alliance of producers, has largely complied with its self-imposed production curbs. Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar has continued to weaken versus major rivals, with the ICE U.S. Dollar Index on track for a 1.3% August drop. A weaker dollar is seen as supportive to commodities priced in the currency, making them less expensive to users of other currencies.
Meanwhile, oil bulls saw earlier support from data out of China. The country’s official non-manufacturing purchasing managers index rose to 55.2 in August, up from 54.2 in July, the National Bureau of Statistics said Monday. The August reading was the sixth consecutive expansion after the gauge in February was fell well below the 50 mark, which separates expansion from contraction.