Oil prices gained more than 1.5 percent during Monday’s Asian trading session after Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed to extend their crude production cuts from the original near-term end date to March 2018.
In a joint statement released by Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih and Russian Minister Alexander Novak, it was noted that “The two ministers agreed to do whatever it takes to achieve the desired goal of stabilizing the market and reducing commercial oil inventories to their 5-year average level.” The ministers expressed optimism that other countries will join the efforts.
U.S. WTI crude was trading at $48.59 per barrel as of 7:05 a.m. GMT on Monday, a 1.57 percent increase. At the same time, Brent crude was trading at $51.61 per barrel, a 1.51 percent increase.
Weekend Woes Don’t Impact Markets
A vicious ransomware attack dubbed as WannaCry over the weekend that has hit some 200,000 computers in more than 150 countries hasn’t seemed to slow the global markets despite concern of this possibility over the weekend. The attack locked many people out of their computers, including British hospital employees and Spanish phone company workers. The attack didn’t seem to slow many traders’ computers or to impact Asian stock exchanges. Chinese shares gained 0.5 percent on Monday on stronger retail sales and property investment numbers buoyed weaker sectors. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was trading only slightly lower, down 0.12 percent while MSCI’s broadest index of shares outside Japan gained 0.1 percent and hit its highest level since June 2015 earlier in the trading session.
The dollar gained slightly against the yen, trading at 113.49, though it eased slightly against the euro to trade at $1.0934.