Oil was priced at $118.07 per barrel at 8:15 a.m. Eastern Time on October 30, 2026, using Brent as the benchmark, according to a report by Fortune, republished on Yahoo Finance. The price is $2.67 higher than at the same time the previous day and around $53 above the level of one year earlier.
The Fortune data shows a yesterday price of $115.40, a 2.31% rise to the current level. One month earlier, the benchmark stood at $99.47, an increase of 18.69% since then. One year ago, oil was at $64.69, which implies a gain of 82.51% over that period.
The report stresses that oil prices cannot be forecast with precision. Supply and demand are the ultimate drivers, but concerns about economic recession, war and other large-scale disruptions can shift the market's direction quickly. The article does not attribute the latest move to a specific event.
Crude oil typically accounts for the majority of the per-gallon cost of gasoline, so changes in its price have a significant effect on pump prices. Fortune notes that retail gasoline prices tend to rise quickly when crude surges but fall more slowly when crude retreats, a pattern sometimes described as “rockets and feathers.” The report also points to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an emergency crude store intended mainly for energy security, which can provide temporary relief during supply shocks.
The article identifies Brent as the main global oil benchmark and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) as the main North American benchmark. It states that Brent better represents global oil performance because it prices much of the world's traded crude, and notes that the U.S. Energy Information Administration uses Brent as its primary reference in its Annual Energy Outlook.
Fortune describes oil's long-run price history as highly volatile. It cites the early 1970s oil shock, when Middle East exporters cut exports and imposed an embargo on the U.S. and others during the Yom Kippur War; the mid-1980s price decline linked to lower demand and more non-OPEC producers; the 2008 spike followed by a collapse during the global financial crisis; and the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, which pushed prices below $20 per barrel. Source: Fortune, as republished on Yahoo Finance (finance.yahoo.com).
The original article is available at fortune.com. Price figures are as reported at 8:15 a.m. Eastern Time on October 30, 2026.
Source: finance.yahoo.com