Short covering continued on Friday, which once again lent considerable buoyancy to oil prices. Brent further increased by a good 5% and WTI by more than 6%. In the last two days of trading combined, Brent is up 16% and WTI has gained 17%.



In each case, these are the most pronounced two-day rises since the longstanding bull market began in 2003, assuming that WTI price surges due to contract rollovers in September 2008 and January 2009 are left out of the equation.



At its peak, Brent climbed on Friday to $51 per barrel, while WTI cost $46 per barrel for a time. Oil prices thus rose by nearly $9 as compared with their 6½-year lows of the beginning of the week. Unlike on Thursday, there was no further support from rising equity markets on Friday. Instead, the increase was probably driven chiefly by momentum, says Commerzbank.