Brent was the energetic commodity which marked the best performance in 2017. What allowed a price increase of 17.25% was mainly the continuation of the agreement on production cuts proposed by OPEC. Partner countries like Russia adhered too. Indeed, output was reduced by 1.8 million barrels per day and, together with geopolitical risk in Iran, is exercising pressure on prices, which at the end of 2017 were in the neighbourhood of $70 per barrel.
Ethanol and natural gas prices declined, as the biofuel industry is now in a stalemate phase, due to the lack of normatives supportiong biofuels in the competition against petrol and gasoline.
Natural gas was driven down further by Russian and Asian output, besides the strong competition on liquid natural gas.
