Oil prices rose on Wednesday, extending gains from the previous session, as a hurricane disrupted US offshore oil and gas production and an industry report showed a big drop in US crude stockpiles.
Brent crude was trading up 15 cents, or 0.4%, at $40.68 a barrel by 0055 GMT, while US crude gained 18 cents, or 0.5%, to $38.46 a barrel. Both contracts rose by more than 2% on Tuesday.
More than 25% of US offshore oil and gas output was shut and export ports were closed on Tuesday as Hurricane Sally sat just off the US Gulf Coast.
“Our current estimate for the total outage associated with the Sally weather system is between 3 million and 6 million barrels of oil over approximately 11 days,” Rystad Energy said in a note.
