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.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) last week recorded an increase in the number of shareholders to the highest in almost eight months, despite its share price falling 3.38 percent from the previous week, Taiwan Stock Exchange data released on Saturday showed. As of Friday, TSMC had 1.88 million shareholders, the most since the week of April 25 and an increase of 31,870 from the previous week, the data showed. The number of shareholders jumped despite a drop of NT$50 (US$1.59), or 3.38 percent, in TSMC’s share price from a week earlier to NT$1,430, as investors took profits from their earlier gains
In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance, Reuters has learned. Completed early this year and undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML who reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, according to two people with knowledge of the project. EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold
CHINA RIVAL: The chips are positioned to compete with Nvidia’s Hopper and Blackwell products and would enable clusters connecting more than 100,000 chips Moore Threads Technology Co (摩爾線程) introduced a new generation of chips aimed at reducing artificial intelligence (AI) developers’ dependence on Nvidia Corp’s hardware, just weeks after pulling off one of the most successful Chinese initial public offerings (IPOs) in years. “These products will significantly enhance world-class computing speed and capabilities that all developers aspire to,” Moore Threads CEO Zhang Jianzhong (張建中), a former Nvidia executive, said on Saturday at a company event in Beijing. “We hope they can meet the needs of more developers in China so that you no longer need to wait for advanced foreign products.” Chinese chipmakers are in
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
RSS