The weekly average oil price of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) reached 72.21 U.S. dollars per barrel last week, the highest point of this year, OPEC said Monday.

After hovering for six weeks, OPEC weekly average oil price exceeded 70 dollars to 72.21 dollars. In addition, it also registered the largest weekly increase, which was up 4.33 dollars compared to the previous week, since the end of March.

The OPEC oil price has been increasing for seven consecutive days since Oct. 8, which was very rare in oil prices movement.

In the last trading day last week, the one-day rise even reached 1.69 dollars, which also set the highest record of OPEC daily oil price this year.

Since the world economy has begun to resume, the expectation of growing demand for crude oil continued to push the international oil price.

The U.S. Federal Reserve's newly released figures showed that, after increasing for two consecutive months, the U.S. industrial production increased again by 0.7 percent in September compared to the previous month.

All of relevant economic figures suggested the recession was slowing down and was in favor of stimulating the crude oil demand.

Moreover, since winter has approached to the Northern Hemisphere, the weather factor also increasingly boosted the oil price.

In response, OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla Salem El-Badri noted on Oct. 16 that the continual increase of oil prices was not due to insufficient supply, but mainly to speculative trading, adding that OPEC decided not to intervene in the market, or increase crude oil supplies.

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