Oil on Friday edged lower, but still posted the biggest weekly gain in months, days after an attack on a key Saudi Arabian facility roiled markets.
Brent rose 6.7 percent this week, the largest weekly gain since January, while West Texas Intermediate registered its biggest weekly rise since June.
The weekly increases held even after both benchmarks fell in late trading on Friday as investors grew more confident of Saudi Arabia’s ability to restore production to pre-attack levels.
“Gains this week are dependent on promises that the Saudis have made,” said Gene McGillian, a senior analyst and broker at Tradition Energy in Connecticut.
“There is a little more faith that the Saudis will do what they have said,” McGillian added.
Earlier, Brent rose as much as 1.3 percent while West Texas Intermediate increased 1.7 percent after US President Donald Trump tightened the screws on Iran by sanctioning the Central Bank of Iran in retaliation for the attack that crippled Saudi Arabian oil production.
Saudi Arabia, which has blamed Iran as the source of weapons used in the Sept. 14 aerial attacks, is depleting stockpiles to meet export commitments and operating without its usual buffer of spare capacity, increasing risks for the market should there be other emergencies.
While state-oil company Saudi Arabian Oil Co is optimistic about meeting its post-attack targets for restoring supply, there are skeptics, including Rystad Energy AS and FGE.
Earlier on Friday, Saudi Arabian Oil Co hosted a media tour that showed equipment at the Khurais field and Abqaiq processing plant that were badly damaged from the drone attacks.
That the kingdom is resorting to obtaining supplies from other sources has also fanned concerns about the length of the disruption.
Brent crude for November settled down US$0.12 to US$64.28 per barrel on the ICE Futures Europe Exchange.
Options traders have become the most bullish on Brent in eight years, with the price of one-month benchmark calls relative to puts at the highest since 2011.
West Texas Intermediate for delivery next month, which expired on Friday, fell US$0.04 to US$58.09 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The November contract declined US$0.10 to US$58.09. Brent crude was at a US$6.19 premium to the same-month US marker.
In the US, investors will be monitoring the aftermath of a tropical storm that inundated large swaths of south Texas and affected oil facilities from refineries to pipelines.
The shutdown of refineries and oil terminals is likely to reduce domestic oil demand and curtail exports of crude oil.
In other energy trading, wholesale gasoline fell US$0.02 to US$1.68 per gallon and heating oil declined US$0.01 to US$1.99 per gallon, while natural gas fell US$0.01 to US$2.53 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Gold rose US$8.90 to US$1,507.30 per ounce and silver fell US$0.03 to US$17.74 per ounce, while copper was unchanged at US$2.59 per pound.
Additional reporting by AP
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”