US oil prices rose above $85 a barrel on Monday for the first time in seven years, as traders bet that crude supplies would not keep pace with fast-rising global demand and analysts said a wider energy crunch was spreading to petroleum markets.
The latest price surge came as Goldman Sachs estimated that global oil demand had now almost entirely recovered from last year’s coronavirus-induced collapse and would “shortly” hit its pre-pandemic peak of 100m barrels a day, as Asian economies rebounded from a wave of Delta variant infections.
The bank said soaring natural gas prices in Asia were also pushing consumers to buy more oil for use in power generation — an unexpected outcome of the energy crunch that was adding at least 1m barrels a day to global demand.