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© Reuters. PHOTO FILE: An oil pump is visible at sunset outside Scheibenhard
By Henning Gloystein
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Oil prices rose Wednesday, the OPEC producer club announced that it had sharply reduced its stocks in January and that US sanctions were hitting Venezuelan oil exports.
The US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures price was $ 53.52 per barrel at 7:52 GMT, up 42 cents (0.8%) from their last close.
US prices were also underpinned by a report released Tuesday by the American Petroleum Institute (API), according to which crude oil inventories fell by 998,000 barrels during the week, from 447.2 million to the stock market. February 8, while badysts expected an increase of 2.7 million.
International futures rose 0.8%, or 52 cents, to $ 62.94 a barrel.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which Saudi Arabia is by far the world's largest exporter of crude oil, announced Tuesday that it has reduced production by nearly 800,000 barrels / day in January to 30.81 million barrels a day.
OPEC member Venezuela's supply problems are also driving up oil prices as the South American country goes through a political and economic crisis, with Washington introducing sanctions on oil exports for the United States. public company PDVSA.
Despite political dissent between Venezuela and the United States, US refiners have been among the largest buyers of Venezuelan crude.
These customers collapsed after Washington imposed sanctions earlier this year.
"With no signs of a change of government so far, we see increasing risks that production losses will be larger and earlier than expected by our forecast for a supply loss of 0.33 million barrels per day. in 2019, "said US bank Goldman Sachs (NYSE 🙂 in a note on Wednesday.
Venezuela has been trying to find alternative customers, particularly in Asia, but under pressure from the United States, many buyers are also reluctant to deal with PDVSA.
"Oil production is falling rapidly and companies that normally resell Venezuelan crude have not found a way to mitigate the consequences of US sanctions", Barclays (LON 🙂 says the bank.
Crude oil production in Russia, the United States and Saudi Arabia: https://tmsnrt.rs/2CTwqaq
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Despite OPEC cuts and the Venezuelan crisis, badysts said the global oil markets remain well supplied, while demand could be affected by an economic slowdown.
OPEC on Tuesday reduced its global economic growth forecast for 2019 from 3.3% to 3.3%, highlighting such obstacles as the slowdown in world trade.
"Oil markets continue to focus at the macro level on dual notions of adequate supply and declining demand," said Frank Verrastro, senior vice president of the National Energy and Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies ( CSIS) -tank, says in a note.
He added that the markets were largely supplied because of "sufficient global inventories of oil, from the prospect of weakened demand related to both US-Chinese trade and broader economic concerns," he said. seasonal refinery maintenance strategy – when crude oil demand is declining – and the supply influx from the United States and elsewhere ".
Most of the new supplies come from the United States, where crude oil production increased by more than 2 million bpd last year to a record 11.9 million bpd, making it the country's largest global oil producer ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia.
And while OPEC and its allies, including Russia, hold back supply, US production is expected to increase further, with the Energy Information Administration saying Tuesday that production is expected to reach 13.2 million bpd in 2020.
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