Oil rose for a second day, extending the biggest rally since October 2012, after Saudi Arabia said it was confident that crude will rebound as world economic growth boosts demand.
Brent futures climbed as much as 2.6 percent in London. A global glut that has driven prices lower was created by a lack of cooperation from producers outside OPEC, according to Saudi Arabian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali al-Naimi. The market is oversupplied by 2 million barrels a day, Qatari Minister of Energy and Industry Mohammed al-Sada said.
Oil has slumped about 20 percent since OPEC decided to maintain its production target at a Nov. 27 meeting even as the US pumps crude at a record pace. Producers outside the 12-member group should cut their “irresponsible” output as excess supply harms the market, United Arab Emirates Minister of Energy Suhail al-Mazroui said.
“We can expect more persuasive talk to try and get prices back to a happy median,” Jonathan Barratt, the chief investment officer at Ayers Alliance Securities in Sydney, said by telephone yesterday. “A good balance for the market is US$70. We’re coming into the Christmas period of low liquidity, so expect volatility and fluctuations to continue.”
Brent crude for February settlement gained as much as US$1.59 to US$62.97 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange and was at US$62.59 at 4:10pm in Singapore. It increased 3.6 percent on Friday last week.
European benchmark crude traded at a premium of US$4.33 to West Texas Intermediate (WTI). Prices have fallen 43 percent this year, set for the biggest drop since 2008.
WTI for February delivery climbed as much as US$1.40, or 2.5 percent, to US$58.53 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The January contract expired on Friday last week after advancing US$2.41 to US$56.52. The volume of all futures traded was more than double the 100-day average.
OPEC, which supplies about 40 percent of the world’s oil, will probably resist cutting output even if non-member producers offer to supply less, al-Naimi said at a conference in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.
The group pumped 30.56 million barrels a day last month, exceeding its collective target of 30 million for a sixth straight month, a Bloomberg survey of companies, producers and analysts shows.
“We’re now in a provisional, correctional period,” al-Sada said at the same event. “Markets have stabilization mechanisms that will bring stability. We don’t know exactly how long it will take, but it will stabilize because the current prices will separate the efficient producers from the producers who have high costs.”
Output in the US, the world’s biggest oil consumer, expanded to 9.14 million barrels a day through Dec. 12, according to the US Energy Information Administration. That is the highest level in weekly data that started in January 1983.
The nation’s oil boom has been driven by a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, which has unlocked supplies from shale formations, including the Eagle Ford and Permian in Texas and the Bakken in North Dakota. The three shale plays supplied record amounts last month, the industry-funded American Petroleum Institute said.
In China, the world’s No. 2 oil consumer, crude imports from Russia increased to a record 3.31 million tonnes in November, up 65 percent from a year ago, data from the Chinese General Administration of Customs show. That is about 808,700 barrels a day. Shipments from Saudi Arabia shrank by 5.9 percent from last year, while Iranian supplies slid 2.6 percent.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy