Oil settled above US$60 a barrel for the first time since missile strikes on Saudi Arabia sparked a record price surge three months ago.
Futures closed 1.5 percent higher in New York on Friday, buoyed by a partial truce in the US-China trade dispute that has imperiled demand all year.
Chinese officials said the countries agreed to hold off on a new round of tariffs set to go into effect in a matter of days.
The bullish momentum was undermined when US President Donald Trump tweeted that existing levies will remain in effect.
“The market has just priced in this outcome to a certain extent already,” TD Securities commodity strategist Daniel Ghali said by telephone. “The hope is that a trade deal will translate into more demand.”
Until Friday’s session, crude was poised to end the week little changed after surging more than 7 percent last week on the strength of a surprise OPEC supply cut.
Money managers boosted bullish bets on crude by the most in more than three years in the days before the trade agreement was struck.
“Risk appetite among financial investors is now likely to remain high thanks to the deal between the US and China,” said Eugen Weinberg, head of commodities research at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. Yet “the oil market risks facing a massive oversupply and a pronounced inventory build, at least in the first half of the year.”
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for January delivery rose US$0.89 to settle at US$60.07 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract gained 1.4 percent for the week.
Brent for February settlement advanced US$1.02 to US$65.22 on the London-based ICE Futures Europe Exchange, up 1.3 percent for the week.
The global benchmark settled at a US$5.24 premium to WTI for the same month.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last