Prior-month Nymex crude for May delivery closed +0.5% higher at $73.20/bbl, while May Brent crude closed +0.7% higher at $78.65/bbl, both in maximum two weeks.
Meanwhile, US natural gas prices continued to fall, with Nymex natural gas for April delivery ending -2.8% lower at $2.03/MMBtu. This was its lowest settlement since September 2020, pushed lower by expectations for more moderate temperatures across much of the country.
US crude rose more than 5% on Monday after Iraq had to halt shipments of 450,000 bbl/day from the Kurdistan region via Turkey following an arbitration ruling that Iraq’s agreement was required to ship the oil. Petroleum.
Barclays analysts warned that a sustained disruption in Kurdish oil supply through the end of the year would imply a $3/bbl increase in their full-year Brent price prediction of $92/bbl in 2023.
According to Barclays, a prolonged rebound in Kurdish flows may depend on restoring the terms of oil revenue sharing between the Iraqi federal government and the Kurdistan regional administration, which could be a difficult process.
Occidental Petroleum was the strongest performer among the major oil and gas stocks on Tuesday, rising 4.3%, after key shareholder Berkshire Hathaway bought about 3.7 million shares recently.
Crude Oil Prices Rise Due to Supply Disruptions
Crude prices are rising in early Asian trading due to supply issues. According to ANZ analysts, Brent crude likely rose after a disruption in exports from Iraq, but OPEC shows no evidence of a reduction in oil production.
With an OPEC meeting next week, the cartel has declared it will stay the course despite market volatility, according to ANZ. CMC Markets analysts, Tina Teng in particular, are monitoring Chinese manufacturing PMI data, due to be released on Friday, which may have provided clues to oil demand, a research study indicates.
According to the American Petroleum Institute, the week ending March 24 saw extraction of 6.1 million barrels of oil. Inventories at the Cushing, Okla., storage center show a loss of 5.9 million barrels, a gain of 548 thousand barrels and a draw of 2.4 million barrels in gasoline inventories. May WTI crude oil recently traded at $73.58/bbl, up from $73.20/bbl on Tuesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
!function (f, b, e, v, n, t, s) {
if (f.fbq) return;
n = f.fbq = function () {
n.callMethod ?
n.callMethod.apply(n, arguments) : n.queue.push(arguments)
};
if (!f._fbq) f._fbq = n;
n.push = n;
n.loaded = !0;
n.version = ‘2.0’;
n.queue = ();
t = b.createElement(e);
t.async = !0;
t.src = v;
s = b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0);
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t, s)
}(window, document, ‘script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘504526293689977’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);