ISLAMABAD: Oil futures made a decent weekly gain of over 2 percent after facing two consecutive weeks of losses due to strong demand by China’s refineries and increase in retail sales in the US. Both major global benchmarks Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) posted gains after going down in preceding two weeks, with Brent surging 2.43 percent and WTI going up by 2.29 percent. Brent, the international benchmark for two-thirds of the world’s oil, went up to $76.61 from $74.79 a barrel, showing an improvement of $1.82 on a week-on-week (WoW) basis. The WTI, the main oil benchmark for North America, edged up to $71.78 from $70.17 a barrel on a weekly basis, registering a weekly gain of $1.61. Similarly, the price of Russian Sokol increased by $0.77 (+1.17 percent) to $66.70 from $65.93 on WoW basis. Following suit, Arab Light prices witnessed an increase of $0.67 (+0.87 percent) to reach $78.04 from $77.37 a barrel on a weekly basis. However, the price for Opec Basket decreased from $76.55 to $74.20 on a week-on-week basis, showing a decrease of $2.35 (-3.07 percent). TLTP
