Oil prices surged on Friday, extending gains for the third session, boosted by the OPEC+ decision to keep output quotas largely steady in April, with Saudi Arabia extending its unilateral 1 million barrel per day output cut indefinitely. Only Russia and Kazakhstan were granted 130,000 barrels per day and 20,000 barrels per day increases in their production quota, respectively, reported S&P Global Platts. Traders were also upbeat after Premier Li Keqiang said at the annual session of the National People's Congres that China had set a modest annual economic growth target this year, at above 6%; and that it will improve the system for responding to public health emergencies. Also, Beijing vowed to develop vaccines to cope with major infectious diseases in its development plan for 2021-2025. At around 06:45 AMGMT, WTI crude jumped 1.2% to $64.58 a barrel, while Brent oil soared 1.3% to $67.6 a barrel.
Historically, Crude oil reached an all time high of 147.27 in July of 2008. Crude oil - data, forecasts, historical chart - was last updated on March of 2021.
Crude oil is expected to trade at 61.72 USD/BBL by the end of this quarter, according to Trading Economics global macro models and analysts expectations. Looking forward, we estimate it to trade at 53.08 in 12 months time.