oil futures rose monday ending july on a positive note as the us crude benchmark posted its largest monthly rise since january 2022 brent crude the global benchmark saw its largest monthly jump since may of last year both wti and brent have seen a string of five straight weekly gains with wti turning positive on the year while brent continues to nurse a yeartodate loss of around 1 crude has found its footing on expectations the market will move into deficit in the second half aided by supply cuts by the organization of the petroleum exporting countries and its allies including russia analysts said investors will be eager to see if saudi arabia extends a voluntary additional production cut of 1 million barrels a day that began in july through september meanwhile resilient economic data helped boost crude and gasoline futures last week with the latter hitting 2023 highs while the world continues to look to the us to counter some of the output cuts by russia and saudi arabia rig activity suggests us producers are in no hurry to fill the gap clearing a path for steady undersupply over the near term said robbie fraser manager of global research and analytics at schneider electric in a monday note additionally while recession fears have hardly disappeared most economist polls and measures of consumer confidence point to an improving situation which generally triggers support for discretionary demand in categories like gasoline and jet fuel he wrote this content was created by marketwatch which is operated by dow jones  co marketwatch is published independently from dow jones newswires and the wall street journal