Crude oil prices continued to rise into the weekend as market structure improved EIA, OPEC reports point to near-term risks, but rosier conditions later this year Market backwardation is encouraging refiners to ramp up available capacity utilization Crude oil prices continued to push into fresh multi-month highs last week but prices began to pull back on Thursday as traders digested a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that showed a lower global consumption forecast for 2021. The IEA cut its consumption outlook by 200k barrels per day (bpd), with Covid and its economic impacts cited as the primary headwinds particularly recent setbacks to Europe's vaccination efforts. Still, WTI prices pushed over 2% higher on Friday, taking back Thursday's losses and then some.