Oil climbed in New York on Friday as the supplies stowed at the biggest US storage hub dwindled, while London-traded futures were more subdued after a report that OPEC and allied producers might lift output.
Futures in New York rose 0.7 percent, while the Brent contract was little changed.
Stockpiles at a key pipeline nexus in Oklahoma are shrinking so fast that fears are growing that some tanks might bottom out.
OPEC and other major exporters are to meet today in Algiers to consider their next move as US pressure increasingly isolates the cartel’s No. 3 producer, Iran.
“Until the sanctions hit and until we actually sees what OPEC does, we’re going to have some movements like that where you have some excitement, then a little bit of a pullback,” said Mark Watkins, who helps oversee US$151 billion at US Bank Wealth Management.
Prices briefly crashed on Friday when Reuters reported that the OPEC-led group was discussing a 500,000-barrel daily production increase.
US sanctions have discouraged major crude buyers from purchasing Iranian cargoes, effectively shrinking available supplies.
Isolating Iran might vault crude to US$90 a barrel, JPMorgan Chase & Co said.
“If Saudi Arabia doesn’t commit to substituting most of that loss, 500,000 barrels a day will not be enough to cover the market,” said Bart Melek, head commodity strategist at Toronto Dominion Bank.
The OPEC gathering might indicate whether the group has “the barrels available to fully cover the Iranian lost output,” said John Kilduff, a partner at New York-based hedge fund Again Capital LLC.
US President Donald Trump chided the cartel on Thursday, tweeting that the group “must get prices down now!”
Iranian Minister of Petroleum Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said the group has no authority to impose a new supply arrangement.
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for November delivery on Friday rose US$0.46 to settle at US$70.78 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 2.4 percent from last week’s US$69.14 a barrel.
Total volume traded was about 50 percent above the 100-day average.
Brent for November rose US$0.10 to settle at US$78.80 on the ICE Futures Europe exchange. The contract gained 0.6 on the week.
The global benchmark traded at an US$8.02 premium to WTI for the same month.
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained