Oil prices rose for a second straight session on Thursday, as the possibility that OPEC+ producers might decide against increasing output at a key meeting later in the day lent support, alongside a drop in U.S. fuel inventories.<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures added 52 cents, or 0.8%, to $64.59 a barrel, as of 0709 GMT, after climbing more than 2% on Wednesday. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures gained 43 cents, or 0.7% to $61.71 a barrel.<\/p>\n
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies, together called OPEC+, are considering rolling over production cuts into April instead of raising output, as a recovery in oil demand remains fragile due to the coronavirus crisis, three OPEC+ sources told Reuters.<\/p>\n
The market had been expecting OPEC+ to ease production cuts by around 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) from April and for OPEC leader Saudi Arabia to end its voluntary production cut of an additional 1 million bpd.<\/p>\n
“The Reuters report has introduced a binary outcome to today’s meeting,” said Jeffrey Halley, OANDA’s senior market analyst for Asia Pacific.<\/p>\n
Citi analysts said the sustained recovery in crude oil prices is beginning to expose differences across OPEC+ countries, but it expects the group to find a compromise for a nominal production increase of 500,000 bpd.<\/p>\n
The bank also expects Saudi Arabia to hold on its voluntary extra cut of 994,000 bpd, keeping its production quota at 8.256 million bpd.<\/p>\n
Further supporting prices, Yemen’s Houthi forces said on Thursday they had fired a missile at a Saudi Aramco facility in Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea city of Jeddah. There was no immediate confirmation from Saudi authorities.<\/p>\n
“I believe that accounts for most of the price increases in Asia this morning,” Halley said.<\/p>\n
In the United States, despite a record surge of more than 21 million barrels in crude oil stockpiles last week, gasoline stocks fell by the most in 30 years as refining plunged to an all-time low due to the Texas freeze that knocked out power for millions.<\/p>\n
The United States turned into a net petroleum importer last week at 2.2 million bpd, Citi analysts said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices rose for a second straight session on Thursday, as the possibility that OPEC+ producers might decide against increasing output at a key meeting later in the day lent support, alongside a drop in U.S. fuel inventories. Brent crude futures added 52 cents, or 0.8%, to $64.59 a barrel, as of 0709 GMT, after climbing more than 2% on Wednesday. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures gained 43 cents, or 0.7% to $61.71 a barrel. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies, together called OPEC+, are considering rolling over production cuts into April instead of […]<\/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-403074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403074","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=403074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}