Oil prices hit 11-week highs above US$31 a barrel on Friday as OPEC producers Saudi Arabia and Venez-uela sought assurances that non-member Mexico would follow the cartel in any move to tighten supply.
Renewed signs that looting and sabotage will disrupt the resumption of Iraq's oil exports further bolstered prices, which have gained 20 percent in the last month.
US crude futures jumped US$0.46 to US$31.20 a barrel, hitting its highest price since March 19. In London, benchmark Brent crude was US$0.36 higher at US$27.80 a barrel.
Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi and his Venezuelan counterpart Rafael Ramirez met in Madrid with Mexico's Energy Minister Ernesto Martens ahead of next week's OPEC conference on third-quarter production policy.
"We are coming here before the OPEC meeting to discuss the world oil market. We are also in contact with Russia and Norway and I think we will get good results," Ramirez said.
Saudi Arabia and Venezuela want to lay the groundwork for contributions from non-OPEC producers should the return of Iraq push prices down later this year, officials at the talks said.
"That's the key, because it indicates non-OPEC producers may be willing to cooperate, if nothing else by giving lip service to jawbone the prices higher," said a New York trader.
With oil prices near the top end of OPEC's US$22 to US$28 a barrel band, some ministers have said they see no need for OPEC to cut production limits when it meets next Wednesday in Qatar.
Iraq announced on Thursday it would this month resume oil exports, which have been halted since mid-March. But a full recovery of its pre-war exports -- some 4 percent of globally traded oil -- appears distant.
Baghdad's top US adviser on oil said on Friday that well-organized saboteurs are targeting Iraqi oil facilities in a campaign designed to hamper efforts to revive crude exports as the country recovers from war.
"It is very difficult for me to identify who they are and what their motives are. I can only say their techniques appear to be very professional and aim at causing harm to significant and important installations," Phillip Carroll told reporters in an interview.
Oil markets have now more than reversed losses following US government data on Wednesday showing an unexpected rise in crude and gasoline supplies.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
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