NewsDialy

Oil completes its roundtrip to $102 a barrel, highest close since May

9/12/2026

crude oil prices topped $102 per barrel on Thursday, their highest closing level since May, completing what traders call a roundtrip, meaning a fall from a price level followed by a recovery back to roughly the same place.

Whether that level holds may depend on China. The $102 figure is a closing price. Here is what that means: the official end-of-day settlement, not an intraday peak.

Prices can trade higher during a session and still finish below a threshold. Thursday, crude finished above $102, the first such close since May. Prices had traded above $100 earlier in the year before pulling back.

Thursday's settlement put them back there. China is the open variable in what oil does next.