Oil Prices Climb Amid US Interest Hike Speculations

Oil prices rose in early Asian trading on Friday amid uncertainty around how aggressive the US Federal Reserve will be in hiking interest rates to combat rampant inflation.
Brent crude futures for September delivery rose 80 cents, or 0.8%, to $99.90 a barrel, while WTI crude rose 69 cents, or 0.7%, to $96.47 a barrel, Energy World website reported.
The Fed’s most hawkish policymakers on Thursday said they favored another 75-basis-point interest rate increase at the US central bank’s policy meeting this month, not the bigger rate raise that traders had raced to price in after a report Wednesday showed inflation was accelerating.
The Fed rate hike is expected to follow a similar move by the Bank of Canada, which surprised the market on Wednesday with a 100-basis-point increase.
The rate hike uncertainty, along with weak economic data, caused both benchmark contracts to drop at one stage on Thursday to below the Feb. 23 close, the day before Russia invaded Ukraine in what Moscow calls “a special military operation”. Still, both Brent and WTI had clawed back nearly all losses by the end of the trading session.