HOUSTON, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Oil prices appear to be trapped within a relatively narrow range over fears of a possible weaker demand and other uncertainties.
On Wednesday, the West Texas Intermediate for September delivery gained 0.53 U.S. dollar to settle at 58.58 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while the Brent Crude for September delivery rose 0.45 dollar to close at 65.17 dollars a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange.
"Oil prices seem trapped ... by fears over weak demand," Tom Kool, editor of the OilPriceReport.com, told Xinhua.
The Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs revealed in its report on Tuesday that uncertainty over oil prices across the world was darkening the economic picture for the rest of 2019.
"Economic growth has been below trend, oil prices have been range-bound, and tariff uncertainty has not abated," Goldman Sachs Chief Equity Strategist David Kostin said in a note to investors.
However, Goldman Sachs forecasted that U.S. and global growth would rebound modestly next year. Its economists expected that real U.S. gross domestic product growth would rise from 1.7 percent in the third quarter of 2019 to 2.5 percent in the second quarter of 2020.
