Markets

The war premium remained largely intact despite a dip on Tuesday due to short-lived hopes for a ceasefire.

Heightened tensions between Israel and Iran pushed futures prices for crude benchmarks to five-week highs.

In addition to expectations of additional output from OPEC+ as well as political factions in Libya agreeing to initial steps that could help end production outages in the country, prices were also pressured by economic concerns in Europe.

The long-awaited interest-rate cut by the US Federal Reserve was welcomed by many market watchers as a harbinger of better oil demand but also sparked concerns about the current state of the US economy.

After three consecutive weekly losses for Brent and four drops for WTI, the arrival of the hurricane provided some short-term bullish sentiment as oil companies took production offline.

Expectations of a resolution to the dispute that has reduced Libyan output in recent weeks as well as ongoing concerns about demand in China and other large economies dragged down futures prices.

Supply concerns regarding the Middle East and northern Africa offered some support, but worries about lackluster US and Chinese economic growth as well as expectations of some OPEC+ oil returning to the market in Oct. pushed prices lower.

Gaza ceasefire talks and weak economic data from China and the US pushed down futures prices, but hopes for an interest-rate cut in the US prevented greater week-on-week losses.

While futures prices registered day-on-day swings of 1.2-4.2% on each day of the period, the week-on-week shifts were a quarter of a percent or less.

After a rough start on Monday, WTI and Brent futures rose on each of the remaining days of the week.