Oil prices posted their strongest opening to a year since 2014 on Tuesday, with crude rising to mid-2015 highs amid large anti-government rallies in Iran and ongoing supply cuts led by OPEC and Russia. <\/p>\n
US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $60.61 a barrel at 0423 GMT, up 19 cents, or 0.3 per cent, after hitting $60.73 earlier in the day, the highest since June 2015. <\/p>\n
Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, were at $67.12 a barrel, up 25 cents, or 0.4 pe rcent, after hitting a May 2015 high of $67.27 a barrel earlier in the day. <\/p>\n
It was the first time since January 2014 that the two crude oil benchmarks opened the year above $60 per barrel. <\/p>\n
“Growing unrest in Iran set the table for a bullish start to 2018,” the US-based Schork Report said in a note to clients on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Anti-government protesters demonstrated in Iran on Sunday in defiance of a warning by authorities of a crackdown, extending for a fourth day one of the most audacious challenges to the clerical leadership since pro-reform unrest in 2009. <\/p>\n
Even without the unrest in Iran, which is a major oil exporter, market sentiment was bullish. <\/p>\n
“Falling inventories globally and strong economic growth offset the restart of the Forties pipeline and the resumption of production following a pipeline outage in Libya,” said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at futures brokerage Oanda in Singapore. <\/p>\n
The 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) capacity Forties pipeline system in the North Sea returned to full operations on Dec. 30 after an unplanned shutdown. <\/p>\n
Oil markets have been supported by a year of production cuts led by the Middle East-dominated Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia. The cuts started in January 2017 and are scheduled to cover all of 2018. <\/p>\n
US commercial crude oil inventories have fallen by almost 20 percent from their historic highs last March, to 431.9 million barrels. <\/p>\n
Strong demand growth, especially from China, has also been supporting crude. <\/p>\n
“We would not be surprised to see a further (oil price) rise,” said Sukrit Vijayakar, director of energy consultancy Trifecta. <\/p>\n
Only rising US production, which is on the verge of breaking through 10 million bpd, is somewhat hampering the outlook for 2018. <\/p>\n
“The higher prices are expected to stoke U.S. shale output,” O’Loughlin said. <\/p>\n
US oil production has risen by almost 16 percent since mid-2016, to 9.75 million bpd at the end of last year. <\/p>\n
However, consultancy Rystad Energy said, “US crude oil production capacity has reached 10 million barrels per day.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices posted their strongest opening to a year since 2014 on Tuesday, with crude rising to mid-2015 highs amid large anti-government rallies in Iran and ongoing supply cuts led by OPEC and Russia. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $60.61 a barrel at 0423 GMT, up 19 cents, or 0.3 per cent, after hitting $60.73 earlier in the day, the highest since June 2015. Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, were at $67.12 a barrel, up 25 cents, or 0.4 pe rcent, after hitting a May 2015 high of $67.27 a barrel earlier in the day. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}