Crude Prices Settle Weaker In US

Venezuela sends a large share of its oil exports to the United States because of the proximity and the operation of sophisticated U.S. Gulf Coast refineries specifically created to handle heavy Venezuelan crude.

“I want to say that Russian Federation has large reserves of hydrocarbons: oil, gas and coal”. The latest U.S. Energy Information Administration report shows that regional gasoline stocks have dropped 100,000 barrels to 81.6 million barrels.

Oil has fluctuated as investors assess whether US output and inventory gains will hurt efforts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and other nations to ease a glut.

“The supply of NGL has expanded by an impressive 1.4 million b/d, or almost 70%, to 3.5 million b/d over the past six years”. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was flat at $53.20.

Brent for May settlement rose 11 cents to $56.01 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. “That’s for the market to decide”, he said. “With the sizable accumulation of net-length in the market, this raises concerns that it’s about to stall out and roll over”.

Oil prices have been entrenched in a $3 band since February, failing to take off after OPEC implemented, to a surprisingly high degree, the first cut in production in eight years. The 10 members of the group that pledged to make cuts in Vienna in November implemented 104 percent of those reductions, largely because Saudi Arabia went beyond its target.

Birol made reference to 2008, when prices spiked to more than $140 USA per barrel, saying that without new investment, the oil market could be tighter in 2022 than it was in 2008. The US drillers added seven oil rigs during the week ended 3rd March 2017, taking the total count up to 609, the most since October 2015.

“The financial health of our companies is much, much better than of many foreign companies”, he said. “They deeply appreciate the efforts of OPEC and non-OPEC”, he noted.

With only the best acreage tapped in the US onshore past year, operators continued to show impressive productivity gains, IEA researchers noted.

Futures slipped 0.2 percent. According to OPEC’s calculations, Venezuela had average production of 2.004 million barrels per day in January.

Workers look at a drilling rig of the Rosneft-owned Prirazlomnoye oil field outside Nefteyugansk, Russia, August 4, 2016.