DeHaan: Trade War Responsible For Oil Price Increase Decrease This Week

Oil prices have started this week fairly quiet, which is in stark contrast to the volatility was saw last week. Patrick DeHaan with GasBuddy.com says this volatility, which is a typical for 2019, was due to uncertainty with China.

“When there was pessimism last week, some doubts over the past week over the trade deal, that’s when oil prices declined to $55 [per barrel] before rebounding back up on optimism to $58, and that for the last almost year, has been a significant bellwether behind oil prices.”

China is not the only international issue before investors. Uncertainty remains when it comes to Iran. And OPEC is scheduled to meet in Vienna December 5^th, but DeHaan said seasoned investors aren’t worried about that meeting.

“For now at least, the market is expecting that OPEC will make no change to previous production cuts, choosing to extend those existing cuts, again, like they’ve done for the last few years. It was back in late 2016 that OPEC implemented those production cuts, and they’ve extended them every year.”

Helping alleviate concerns, is the fact that Russia recently announced plans to NOT trim oil production. When it comes to your diesel prices, the national average was unchanged in the past week holding at $3.00 a gallon, Washington’s rate for diesel dropped four cents to $3.53, Oregon price slipped three cents to $3.44, and Idaho’s price was unchanged at $3.45 a gallon.

Here are some of the lowest diesel prices we could find across the Inland Northwest: