Brent oil price trading at 2010 highs on contract expiry

15 April 2010 15 April 2010

BonTrade

Brent oil prices are trading up today again and are currently at 2010 highs, with ICE Brent crude oil futures at $87.50 a barrel early Thursday afternoon, but the sharper rally in May Brent appears to be linked to the contract expiry, triggering speculation by market participants that a company is covering a large short position.

“It’s an amazing move, guess someone has a big position to cover,” a London-based oil trader said.

There were just under 77,000 open interest positions in the contract Wednesday. “It’s always messy on expiry, could go anywhere, nothing more than that really,” another oil broker in London said.

Brent oil futures may have also taken a turn upwards after China released data which showed 11.9% growth in the first quarter of 2010 and the US dollar is holding it’s strength against other currencies on the back of robust economic data from the US.

There is also low production of the North Sea crude Forties, which generally sets the benchmark physical crude Dated Brent BFOE, a basket of crude oils.

“London’s seaborne crude was benefiting from China’s upbeat March crude import numbers,” said Andrey Kryuchenkov, vice president of Commodities Research at VTB Capital.