Crude oil settled above US$50 per barrel as investors assessed the likelihood of a deal to reduce supply after the Russian minister of energy said the country’s oil output might rise to a record next year.
December futures rose 0.4 percent in New York after swinging between gains and losses during intraday trading.
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for December delivery on Friday rose US$0.22 to settle at US$50.85 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It is up US$0.5, or 1 percent, from last week’s US$50.35.
Brent for December settlement on Friday increased US$0.4 to end the session at US$51.78 per barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The contract is down US$0.17, or 0.3 percent, from last week’s US$51.95.
The global benchmark traded at a premium of US$0.93 cents to WTI.
Russian Minister of Energy Alexander Novak said production could be adjusted depending on negotiations with OPEC.
Russian President Vladimir Putin previously pledged his support to efforts by OPEC to limit output.
November gasoline futures rose 2.5 percent to settle at US$1.5314 per gallon (3.78 liter) after Delta Air Lines Inc’s Trainer refinery in Pennsylvania was said to extend the shutdown of its fluid catalytic cracking unit. The refinery, which is operated by subsidiary Monroe Energy LLC, is to keep its sole fluid catalytic cracking unit offline for at least another month for maintenance and repairs, according to people familiar with operations.
Oil has fluctuated amid uncertainty about whether the OPEC can implement an accord to reduce oil output when they gather at an official meeting next month.
A committee is to meet later this month to try to resolve differences over how much individual members should pump.
“After the bulk of declarations from producer countries has come through after the Algiers meeting, there’s not much fundamentally to be driving the market,” London-based BNP Paribas SA head of commodity markets strategy Harry Tchilinguirian said by telephone.
The market will “remain in this holding pattern until we have more clarity and possibly get news from the technical meetings that are going to be held in Vienna. After that, it will be more waiting until we find out whether or not OPEC actually delivers on the promise of a supply cut,” he said.
The market might stabilize by the middle of next year at US$52 to US$55 per barrel, Rosneft PJSC chief executive officer Igor Sechin said on Thursday, adding that prices above US$50 might spur the recovery of US shale production.
Rigs targeting crude in the US rose for an eighth week to the highest level since February, according to Baker Hughes Inc.
US drillers added 11 rigs to 443, the data showed.
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, which tracks the currency against 10 major peers, on Friday rose 0.3 percent. A stronger greenback reduces the appeal of US dollar-denominated raw materials as an investment.
A stronger US dollar is “a big limiting factor for crude oil prices,” John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York-based hedge fund that focuses on energy, said by telephone. “Until we see a real sort of turnaround in the supply balance sheet one way or the other, we’ll probably chop around some more.”
Oil market news:
US gasoline demand rose 1.1 percent to 9.39 million barrels a day last month from a year earlier, the American Petroleum Institute said on Friday in a monthly report.
US crude stockpiles fell by 5.25 million barrels last week to 468.7 million, the US Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.
Nigeria National Petroleum Corp lowered by at least US$1 per barrel its official selling prices for 20 out of 26 oil grades monitored by Bloomberg, according to pricing lists.
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],”
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
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