The oil market has been on a wild ride this year, with crude prices at one point rocketing to highs not seen in three years and in recent weeks, suffering record one-day plunges. The increased volatility has stoked anxiety among major producing as well as consuming countries. Within an already complicated picture, the trade war between the U.S. and China has created uncertainty on oil demand that can be neither properly analyzed nor ignored.
As geopolitical and geological issues in a handful of major oil-producing countries rapidly and unexpectedly tightened oil flows, benchmark Brent crude prices surged toward the psychologically important mark of $80 per barrel in May.
