Crude oil continues its climb higher

Yahoo Finance's Ines Ferre breaks down March futures for crude oil closing above $88 per barrel.

Video Transcript

KARINA MITCHELL: Oil rose today to close out the month amid supply shortages and as political tensions continue to rise. Here with more on all of that, let's bring in Yahoo Finance's Ines Ferre and for a check on how crude settled. Ines.

INES FERRE: Yeah, Karina, WTI March future settled at $88.15 a barrel. We are looking right now at those futures on our YFi Interactive board. We're also taking a look at Brent futures, up more than 1%. Oil seeing its biggest monthly gain now in almost a year. And Brent crude is up, seeing its biggest monthly gain since February of 2021. I do want to mention WTI as it hit $88 a barrel. That's the highest level since 2014. WTI rounding out the month, up more than 15%.

We've seen six straight weeks of gains for oil. Part of the uptick that we've been seeing has to do with the cold weather in the East Coast. You've also got that political tension that's in Eastern Europe with Ukraine and Russia. You had the head of NATO over the weekend saying that Europe needs to diversify its energy supplies.

And members of OPEC+, they've been raising their output target each month since August by 400,000 barrels per day. The next meeting is on February 2, so watch out for that one this Wednesday. And Reuters is reporting that the oil producers are likely to stick with a planned output-- their planned output target of March. Karina, Alexis.

KARINA MITCHELL: OK, Yahoo Finance's Ines Ferre, thank you so much for--