Oil prices have continued to rise for nearly a decade, with gas and aluminum hitting record highs, all because of the war in Ukraine that has fueled fears of energy and raw material supplies. .
US crude (WTI) rose to $ 111.50, a record price since 2013, while the North Sea Brent rose to $ 113.02, the highest level since 2014. At around 13.30 Greek time, prices fell slightly, but continued to record an increase of about 5%.
The European reference price for natural gas, the Dutch TTF, also jumped today to a record high of € 194,715 per megawatt-hour (MWh), and the price of British gas rose to a level very close to last December’s high.
Russia is the second largest exporter of crude oil in the world and accounts for over 40% of the European Union’s annual gas imports.
“The world economy is currently facing a power shortage,” said BJARne Sildrop, an analyst at Seb. continued the analyst.
“The danger now is that the West will come under increasing pressure to impose sanctions on Russian oil and gas exports,” said Markets.com analyst Neil Wilson.
The Russian-Ukrainian conflict comes at a time when crude oil prices are already rising sharply due to insufficient supply and a strong recovery in global demand that has resulted in many countries lifting health restrictions imposed to tackle the pandemic. coronavirus.
Commodity prices were also rising, with “supply disruptions from Russia becoming more likely,” said Commerzbank’s Daniel Brisman. “It seems that it is becoming more and more difficult to export raw materials from Russia.”
The LME index, which includes the prices of aluminum, copper, lead, nickel and zinc traded on the London Metal Exchange, also reached an all-time high of 4,965.4 points, reflecting the general rise in industrial metal prices. The tonn of aluminum today reached $ 3,552 on the London Metal Exchange (LME), a record price, when nickel tonn remained close to the highest levels of the last 11 years.
In 2021, Russia was the third largest producer of aluminum in the world after China and India, according to the World Bureau of Metal Statistics, and exports much of its production to Turkey, Japan, China, the USA and the European Union.
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