RIYADH: Oil prices rose 2 percent on Friday but notched their second straight weekly decline after countries announced plans to release crude from their strategic stocks.
Brent crude futures settled up $2.20, or 2.19 percent, at $102.78 a barrel. US West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, crude futures rose $2.23 to $98.26.
For the week, Brent dropped 1.5 percent while WTI slid 1 percent. For several weeks, the benchmarks have been at their most volatile since June 2020.
Germany to stop Russian oil import
Germany could end Russian oil imports this year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, signaling the urgency driving Europe’s biggest economy to wean itself off energy from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.
Scholz was responding to a journalist’s question about whether he felt a sense of shame that EU countries were paying Russia billions of euros for fossil fuels.
“We are actively working to get independent from the import of Russian oil, and we think that we will be able to make it during this year,” Scholz said during a news conference in London with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.