Crude prices rallied on Friday morning as a result of small outages in America’s largest shale play and ongoing political tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

As if explosions in Nigeria or landslides in Ecuador were not enough, this week has brought another risk factor that was still yet to impact prices – cold. Indeed, a massive winter storm sweeping across the US reached the Permian Basin, triggering fears of potential supply disruptions in the largest American shale play. Add to this the rubber stamping of OPEC+ production increases into March 2022, completely ignoring the inability or unwillingness of the oil group to stick to its production targets, pepper it with still-ongoing Russia-Ukraine tensions and we have the ideal circumstances for oil prices to surpass the $100 per barrel mark.

Oil prices have been on the rise, with Friday’s trading session seeing Brent trading around $93 per barrel, whilst the US benchmark WTI moved to near-parity, trending above $92 per barrel.