Oil prices were lower today on a stronger dollar and possible interest rate hikes next month. “The dollar is a little bit stronger, and that seems to be putting a little bit of pressure on oil here,” Price Futures Group analyst Phil Flynn said. Traders are betting the Fed will raise its lending rate in May by another quarter of a percentage point and have pushed out to late this year expectations of a rate cut, as typically occurs in a slowdown. U.S. shale crude oil production in the seven biggest shale basins is expected to rise in May by 49,000 bpd to 9.33 million bpd, the highest on record, data from the Energy Information Administration showed on Monday. WTI traded up $1.69 or 2.1% to close at $80.83. Brent traded up $1.55 or 1.8% to close at $84.76.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oil prices were lower today on a stronger dollar and possible interest rate hikes next month. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8776,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-petroleum-daily"],"yoast_head":"\n