1. The factors affecting oil prices are very complicated, including politics, economy, inventory, climate, technology, etc. These factors come and go, and there are different dominant factors in different periods. Supply and demand factors. As a commodity, the price of oil depends on the long-term supply and demand relationship. The sharp drop in oil prices in the mid-1980s can be said to be the direct result of the high oil price policy in the 1970s. High oil prices have led to widespread fuel conservation in oil-consuming countries around the world. At the same time, it also stimulated the oil production of non-OPEC countries, increased the oil supply, made the world oil supply exceed demand to reach saturation, and the oil price fell inevitably. The rise of international oil prices since 2003 is essentially caused by the rigid growth of world oil demand and the historical low of excess oil production capacity caused by insufficient investment.
2. Political and economic factors. Behind every sharp fluctuation of oil price in history, we can see the shadow of political and economic factors. 1973, the fourth Middle East war and the outbreak of the oil embargo triggered the first oil crisis. 1979 Iran's Islamic revolution led to a sharp decline in Iran's oil production. After the "9. 1 1" incident, the war on terrorism launched by the United States brought turmoil and fluctuation to the oil supply in the Middle East. Since the 1970s, the international oil market has shown a pattern of mutual restraint between OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers, oil consumers and oil companies. This makes political and economic factors play an important role in oil price fluctuations.
3. Futures speculation. In recent years, due to the continued weakness of the US dollar and the sluggish stock market, the investment returns of American speculative funds in the stock market and bond market are disappointing, while the strong demand for energy and raw materials has promoted the global economic recovery, leading to the withdrawal of some speculative funds from the stock market, foreign exchange market and other markets and a large influx of speculative energy and raw material futures in the futures market. Oil stocks. Although inventory is not the direct cause of determining the price, it is the direct embodiment of market ups and downs. If we take the initiative to increase inventory, inventory will become demand. If the demand increases and the market supply remains unchanged, the price will rise accordingly; On the contrary, if we take the initiative to reduce inventory.