US crude traded near the highest in 3 and a half years as disruption at Libyan ports and a plunge in American stockpiles reinforced fears of a supply squeeze.<\/p>\n
US oil stockpiles declined the most since September 2016, the Energy Information Administration reported Wednesday, just as some buyers of Iranian crude faced increasing pressured from President Donald Trump to halt imports from the Persian Gulf nation. A breakaway faction of Libya\u2019s National Oil Corp. ordered the halt of eastern ports placed under its control by a militia leader.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are looking at a near-term future where supply risk will support the price,\u201d said Ole Sloth Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank A\/S in Copenhagen. \u201cWe have seen before the major impact that Libya can have on the market. Europe could end up having to source oil from different locations on a combination of Iran sanctions and the risk of falling Libyan production.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prices have been on an upward swing as Trump\u2019s administration seeks to dissuade purchases of oil from Iran, the third-largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The efforts to isolate and hobble the Islamic Republic have overshadowed Saudi Arabia\u2019s plan to lift output to a record within weeks following OPEC\u2019s agreement to relax output caps.<\/p>\n
West Texas Intermediate crude for August delivery traded at $72.86 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 10 cents, at 10:54 a.m. in London. Total volume was 25 percent below the 100-day average. The contract rose $2.23 to close at $72.76 on Wednesday, the highest settlement since Nov. 2014.<\/p>\n
The spread between front-month WTI futures and the September contract widened for a seventh day to $1.55 in New York as shrinking inventories strengthened the market structure known as backwardation.<\/p>\n
Brent futures for August settlement rose 33 cents to $77.95 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. Prices on Wednesday climbed $1.31, to $77.62. The more-active September contract was 35 cents higher at $77.81.<\/p>\n
The global benchmark traded at a $5.10 premium to WTI for August, after closing at the narrowest since April on Wednesday. The spread has collapsed since settling at $11.43 on June 7, the widest since February 2015.<\/p>\n
In Libya, the eastern National Oil Corp. in Benghazi ordered the halt of exports from Es Sider, the country\u2019s biggest terminal, as well as Ras Lanuf, Zueitina, Brega and Hariga, according to company chief Faraj Said. Forces loyal to militia commander Khalifa Haftar gave eastern NOC control of the terminals earlier this month.<\/p>\n
The internationally-recognized NOC in Tripoli said it was confident the eastern splinter organization isn\u2019t capable of exporting crude. National production has slumped to 700,000 barrels a day from about 1 million.<\/p>\n
In the US, nationwide stockpiles declined by 9.89 million barrels last week, US government data showed. That\u2019s a surprise drop from the 3-million-barrel fall expected in an earlier Bloomberg survey. Inventories in the storage hub at Cushing, Oklahoma, also drew down by about 2.7 million barrels last week, while exports rose, hitting 3 million barrels a day for the first time. This was despite concerns about a pipeline bottleneck in the Permian region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US crude traded near the highest in 3 and a half years as disruption at Libyan ports and a plunge in American stockpiles reinforced fears of a supply squeeze. US oil stockpiles declined the most since September 2016, the Energy Information Administration reported Wednesday, just as some buyers of Iranian crude faced increasing pressured from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35642,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35643,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35641\/revisions\/35643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}