Gasoline price today (June 26): Turning around to accelerate

Gasoline and oil prices have reversed last week's decline, turning around to rise slightly. Brent crude oil prices have risen above $74 per barrel.

World oil prices

The oil market was dominated by green on the first day of the new trading week. Both Brent and WTI crude were on an upward trend, with Brent surpassing $74 per barrel and US WTI heading towards $70 per barrel.

Last week, oil prices experienced a downturn, with both Brent and WTI crude plummeting 3.5%, closing at $73.85 per barrel, while WTI fell to $69.16 per barrel.

Gasoline and oil prices are regaining upward momentum. (Illustration: Oilprice)

Over the week's five trading sessions, oil prices fell in four and rose in only one. The approximately 2% mid-week price increase was driven by rising US corn and soybean prices reaching multi-month highs, raising expectations that global crop shortages could reduce biofuel blending and boost oil demand. Prices were also supported by a weakening US dollar after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell suggested the central bank was close to achieving its policy goals.

In the remaining four trading sessions, the first two and the last two, oil prices experienced sharp declines, remaining in the red. Factors contributing to this drop included concerns surrounding China's unrecovered economy , uncertain demand from that country, rising gasoline inventories in the US, and especially the unexpected interest rate hike by the Bank of England.

Data shows that last month, Chinese refineries added approximately 1.77 million barrels of crude oil per day to their inventories, the highest level since July 2020. This stockpiling occurred during the peak of the refinery's spring maintenance period, bringing the total amount of crude oil in Chinese storage to nearly 1 billion barrels.

Meanwhile, industrial output and retail sales growth in China in May fell short of expectations, prompting Beijing to take further action to boost the post-pandemic recovery.

Major banks have also lowered their GDP growth forecasts for the East Asian nation this year. Specifically, Japan's Nomura Bank cut its GDP growth forecast for China this year from 5.5% to 5.1%, following similar moves by UBS, Standard Chartered, Bank of America, and JPMorgan. The banks now expect China's GDP in 2023 to be between 5.1% and 5.7%, down from the previous range of 5.5% to 6.3%.

Fuel prices continue to fluctuate. (Illustrative image: Reuters)

Oil prices plummeted by as much as 4% after the market reacted to the Bank of England's decision to double its expected interest rate hike to 5%. The bank raised interest rates by 50 basis points, instead of 25, in an effort to curb still-high inflation in the UK (8.7% in May).

According to Oilprice , WTI crude oil is currently trading below $70 per barrel, prompting traders to buy. This could lead to a short-term rebound in oil prices before they continue to fall.