Oil futures shook off early declines Monday to end higher, with U.S. prices up by more than 1% as the June contracts expired at the end of the session. The recovery for oil prices “wasn’t driven by anything specific, so it remains to be seen where prices are headed from here,” said Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at StoneX. However, “the weaker demand narrative is now mostly priced in, and short sellers have less reason to slam prices lower than a couple of weeks ago.” Natural-gas futures, meanwhile, settled near the day’s lows, down more than 7% for the session after posting a rally of just over 14% last week. June West Texas Intermediate crude CLM23 rose 44 cents, or 0.6%, to settle at $71.99 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on the contract’s expiration day. June natural gas NGM23 fell 19 cents, or 7.2%, to settle at $2.40 per million British thermal units.
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