Another week, another failure for oil to close above $80

The oil market isn’t quite sure what it wants to do. This week, OPEC extended its production cut, the Saudis raised prices and US inventories tightened. But that wasn’t enough to get oil through $80 as it tried on Monday, Wednesday and today. Despite touching above $80 on a couple days, it failed to close above and never even matched last week’s intraday high of $80.85.

That’s not a great sign for crude, though the seasonals are still positive for March and April so there’s room for optimism. It pulled back to $77.84 today after failing at $79.99 so there are clearly technical players involved. We will see if signals from the physical market next week can re-assert themselves. Otherwise, a fall below $77.50 could be trouble.