Since the Brent oil price rose above US $60 per barrel in February this year, it has repeatedly tried to hit the US $70 per barrel mark in March and may, but failed. Until June 1, OPEC and its production reduction partner (OPEC +) said that after continuing to implement the previous production policy in July, the main contract price of Brent crude oil futures closed above $70 per barrel, and then closed above $71 per barrel for three consecutive trading days.

In the past quarter, the pressure on oil prices to rise further came mainly from concerns that Iran's crude oil supply may increase significantly. The United States and Iran began marathon indirect negotiations on the U.S. re-entry into Iran's nuclear agreement in early April. Once the two sides reach an agreement, the United States is expected to lift sanctions on Iran's crude oil exports. Iran hopes that its crude oil exports can return to 2.5 million barrels per day, while its average daily crude oil exports in the third quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021 are only 420000 barrels and 825000 barrels.

However, information shows that the final agreement may not be reached until the third quarter. In this way, the urgency of increasing Iran's crude oil supply has been greatly eased, and market worries have been eased.

At the same time, with the coming of summer, global oil demand shows a strong recovery momentum. Progress in vaccination in Europe also eased market concerns.

The market expects the global average daily oil demand to increase by millions of barrels this summer. From May to July, OPEC + adopted a gradual approach to gradually reduce the scale of production reduction, and the supply growth was only about 2 million barrels per day, so the market can fully absorb the supply growth. Global crude oil supply and demand in April has entered a state of supply less than demand, accompanied by the continuous decline of global crude oil inventory and the change of market mentality.

Austria's JBC energy recently said that with the recovery of demand, it is expected that the net global oil supply gap in July and August will rise to about 3 million B / D from the current 1 million B / d.

As for the increase of Iran's crude oil supply, OPEC Secretary General barjindo predicted that the return of Iran's crude oil production and export will be orderly and transparent. Paul Sheldon, chief geopolitical adviser to standard & Poor's global proctor's analysis, said that assuming that the US sanctions on Iran are completely lifted in September, the crude oil supply of OPEC and non OPEC oil producing countries is expected to increase by 1.7 million barrels per day from August to December, including 925000 barrels in August.

The gap between supply and demand in the international oil market is actually the result of artificial regulation by OPEC and other production reducing countries. The oil producing countries have a lot of surplus production capacity and lack of hedging of shale oil in the United States. OPEC + has significantly enhanced its ability to control international oil prices.