As far as the commodity attribute of crude oil is concerned, there is a relationship between supply and demand. As a non-renewable resource, it is conceivable that when the supply exceeds the demand, the price will naturally rise. Therefore, when no new large-scale oil fields are discovered and major technological innovations appear, international oil prices will fluctuate, and the relationship between supply and demand should be easy for everyone to understand.
In the international crude oil market, the weekly crude oil inventory and demand data published by the American Crude Oil Association (API) and the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the US Department of Energy have become the basis for many crude oil companies to judge the short-term supply and demand situation of the international crude oil market and conduct practical operations. After the publication of crude oil inventory and demand data, WTI oil price chooses the upward or downward fluctuation direction, which directly affects the trend of London and Singapore Brent oil and drives the oil price to fluctuate upward or downward.
The development of world economy is also the main factor affecting the change of crude oil price. The growth of global economy will affect the price of crude oil by changing the demand of crude oil market. There is a strong positive correlation between economic growth and oil demand growth, and the proportional relationship between them is generally expressed by the elastic coefficient of crude oil consumption to GDP.
A very important point of crude oil price change is that it is greatly influenced by political forces and political situation. The terrorist attacks in Iraq, the anti-terrorism activities of the United States in Afghanistan, the situation in Pakistan and Iran. Competing for crude oil resources and controlling the crude oil market have become important reasons for the oil market turmoil and soaring oil prices.
At present, in the international crude oil futures market, the operation of international speculative capital is a factor that cannot be ignored. Speculation and market expectation in the crude oil market often increase the fluctuation of crude oil prices. The influence of speculative factors in the international crude oil market on crude oil prices is 10%-20%. Especially when some unexpected events occur, a large amount of speculative capital will operate in the international crude oil futures market, which will aggravate the fluctuation of international crude oil prices.
The change of international crude oil market price is often influenced by geopolitical factors of oil-producing countries. Geopolitical conflicts will lead to a real decline in crude oil supply; The second is that geopolitical conflicts have caused the international crude oil market to worry about the future supply reduction, but the actual supply has not decreased. Judging from the current geopolitical situation, the focus of geopolitics in the future is mainly Iraq and Iran in the Middle East.
Psychological factors are people's expectations of the market. The expected speculation that a large amount of speculative capital enters the crude oil market has led to the upward trend of oil prices. With the help of economic fluctuations or some unexpected events, speculative funds guide and use people's expectations to speculate in the spot and futures markets. Expectation and speculation interact, and spot futures promote each other, thus aggravating the fluctuation of crude oil prices.