Oil prices steadied on Wednesday, supported by news of a fall in Iranian crude supplies as U.S. sanctions deter buyers, but held back by evidence of a rise in U.S. inventories. <\/p>\n
Benchmark Brent crude oil was unchanged at $75.95 a barrel by 0905 GMT. U.S. light crude was 5 cents higher at $68.58 a barrel. <\/p>\n
Iran’s crude oil and condensate exports in August are set to drop below 70 million barrels for the first time since April 2017, well ahead of the Nov. 4 start date for a second round of U.S. economic sanctions, preliminary trade flows data on Thomson Reuters Eikon show.<\/p>\n
Bowing to pressure from Washington, many crude buyers have already reduced orders from Iran, OPEC’s third-biggest producer.<\/p>\n
Although Tehran is offering steep discounts, Iran’s August crude oil and condensate loadings are estimated at 2.06 million bpd, versus a peak of 3.09 million bpd in April.<\/p>\n
“U.S. sanctions towards Iran are now increasingly kicking in which will help to dry up the physical crude oil market,” said SEB Markets commodities analyst Bjarne Schieldrop.<\/p>\n
U.S. crude inventories rose by 38,000 barrels to 405.7 million barrels in the week to Aug. 24, the American Petroleum Institute said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Official U.S. fuel inventory and crude production data will be published later on Wednesday by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). <\/p>\n
Traders said reports of potential investment in Venezuela’s struggling oil production also affected markets. Venezuelan crude exports have halved since 2016 to below 1 million barrels per day (bpd). <\/p>\n
To stem tumbling output, Venezuelan state-run oil firm PDVSA said on Tuesday it had signed a $430 million investment agreement to increase production by 640,000 bpd at 14 oilfields, although some analysts doubted whether this investment would go through given the instability in the country.<\/p>\n
Despite the risk of disruption, especially from OPEC-countries like Venezuela, Iran, Libya and Nigeria, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said global supply could climb towards the end of the year.<\/p>\n
“Heading into 4Q18, we expect rising non-OPEC oil production as supply outages abate and greenfield projects ramp up,” the U.S. bank said. “Non-OPEC supply outages are at a 15-month high of 730,000 bpd. However, nearly half of these volumes are in the process of being restored.”<\/p>\n
Adding to that will be new production in Canada, Brazil and the United States, which the bank said “should provide a substantial boost to non-OPEC supplies” during the second half of the year “taming upside pressures on Brent crude oil prices”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices steadied on Wednesday, supported by news of a fall in Iranian crude supplies as U.S. sanctions deter buyers, but held back by evidence of a rise in U.S. inventories. Benchmark Brent crude oil was unchanged at $75.95 a barrel by 0905 GMT. U.S. light crude was 5 cents higher at $68.58 a barrel. Iran’s crude oil and condensate exports in August are set to drop below 70 million barrels for the first time since April 2017, well ahead of the Nov. 4 start date for a second round of U.S. economic sanctions, preliminary trade flows data on Thomson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"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-177882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177882","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\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}