Oil set for weekly gain on supply cuts, strong demand

REUTERS: Oil prices were set for a second consecutive week of gains yesterday, buoyed by tightening supplies and continued support from OPEC and its allies on supply cuts. 

Brent crude oil futures LCOc1 were at US$74 per barrel at 0958 GMT, up 22 cents from their last close. 

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were up 21 cents at US$68.50 a barrel. 

Both Brent and WTI hit their highest levels since November 2014 on Thursday, at US$74.75 and US$69.56 per barrel respectively. 

Saudi Oil Minister Khalid al Falih said OPEC and its allies were still far away from reaching their target and that a drawdown in oil inventories needed to continue. 

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told his OPEC and non-OPEC counterparts in a closed-door meeting in the Saudi city of Jeddah on Friday that Moscow was committed to a deal on cutting oil supplies until the end of 2018, sources told Reuters. 

The sources spoke after Russia’s TASS news agency cited Novak as saying that OPEC and non-OPEC countries might ease oil production cuts as early as this year. 

OPEC and its allies have been curbing production since 2017, helping push up prices. The deal to cut is currently scheduled to expire at the end of 2018. A technical OPEC and non-OPEC committee meeting in Jeddah on Thursday, ahead of yesterday’s ministerial meeting, found that a global overhang in oil inventories, which the deal has targeted for eliminating, has virtually disappeared. 

“Even if OPEC were to reach its target of reducing oil inventories to their recent five-year average by the next official June meeting, Saudi Arabia is driving a strong agenda to maintain cuts for the balance of 2018,” BNP Paribas global head of commodity market strategy Harry Tchilinguirian told the Reuters Global Oil Forum. 

Firm demand was also giving prices a floor. 

“Global oil demand data so far in 2018 has come in line with our optimistic expectations, with Q1 2018 likely to post the strongest year-on-year growth since Q4 2010 at 2.55 million barrels per day,” U.S. bank Goldman Sachs said in a note published late on Thursday. 

Beyond OPEC’s supply management, crude prices have also been supported by an expectation that the United States will re-introduce sanctions on OPEC-member Iran. 

“The first key geopolitical issue is the expiration of the current U.S. waiver of key sanctions against Iran,” said Standard Chartered Bank in a note this week.