Oil prices fend off worries about higher world output

Oil futures began in the second half of the year with some losses on Monday as global oil producers could increase output more than investors expect.

Gross contracts mitigated the larger losses of a weekend tweet from President Donald Trump, who was talking about a large potential increase in Saudi Arabia 's output.

August West Texas Intermediate Gross on the New York Mercantile Exchange

CLQ8, -0.43%

was down 41 cents, or nearly 0.6%, to $ 73.74 a barrel, ready to give up much of the 1% increase % of Friday. September Brent

LCU8, -1.51%

fell $ 1.10, or 1.4%, to $ 78.13 per barrel

WTI crude increased another year highest since November 2014 Friday, while recording strong weekly, monthly, quarterly and first half 2018 earnings. Prices have risen thanks to long-standing efforts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to reduce production, anticipated increases in demand and supply disruptions.

Read: This is how the commodities sector behaved in the first half of the year

The Brent recorded its best performance since May, after also posting solid gains in the first half of the year

Read: Investors expect the second half of 2018 to predict growth – in the midst of growing uncertainty

The 3 1/2 year US benchmark was somewhat disconcerting, according to Barnabas Gan, an economist at Overseas-Chinese Bank. He added that the language in Trump's weekend tweet – which suggested that Saudi Arabia could increase production by 2 million barrels a day – left a wide margin for interpretation.

A senior Saudi official told The Wall Street Journal on Saturday that no specific promises had been made on production, but rather, assurances were given that the country had the capacity to respond to demand.

A White House statement released the same evening canceled Trump's tweet, according to reports. He said that King Salman of Saudi Arabia had told the president that his country would increase oil production "perhaps up to 2,000,000 barrels."

Saudi Arabia and Russia reached an agreement "The decision of OPEC members and non-OPEC countries to increase the gross of about a million barrels as of July 1 was considered a negative factor for oil prices, "said Hussein Sayed. , chief market strategist at FXTM. "However, the increase in the supply of some OPEC members and non-OPEC members will be offset by a decline in others; doing the math here will be complicated for investors betting on the price direction. "

Meanwhile, Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said Friday that countries that buy Iranian oil will have the opportunity to gradually reduce their purchases. Bloomberg

Brouillette's comments were at odds with an earlier statement by the Trump administration that Washington would condemn countries that do not cut Iran's oil imports to "zero" oil. here on November 4th.

"It is problematic for the United States in terms of sanctions for Iran," said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodity analyst at SEB Markets. "They want the sanctions to be implemented as quickly as possible, as aggressively as possible, but at the same time they want a lower price of oil.It is a contradiction."

Experts predict the market will lose An additional 1.5 million barrels of oil per day by the end of the year, mainly due to breakdowns in Venezuela and Iran.

And analysts are monitoring developments in Libya where major oil ports have been shut down due to a struggle for internal power in the country that has removed 850,000 barrels a day from the world oil market.

"I was a little surprised to see the price of oil is falling today," said Schieldrop. "If the Libyan failure continues, he is very optimistic about the crude." [19659002InastatementsentMondaytotheWallStreetJournalLibyaNationalOilCodeclaredforcemajeureovertheportsofZueitinaandHarigaAmilitaryfactioncontrollingtheregiontheLibyanNationalArmypreventeditsshipsfromEnteringtheports

Meanwhile, the US bid showed signs of tightening on Friday after Baker Hughes reported that the number of US rigs dropping declined from four to 858 this He recorded a steady fall twice a week.

Among the other energy contracts, the gasoline of August

RBQ8, -1.62%

paid 1.5% to $ 2.118 a gallon, while August heating oil

HOQ8, -1.38%

fell 1.4% to $ 2.18 a gallon. Natural August

NGQ18, -2.19%

fell 2.2% to $ 2.86 per million British thermal units.

– Neanda Salvaterra, Biman Mukherji and Benoit Faucon contributed to this article