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Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Oil prices rise as Saudi supply risks come into focus

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Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is an international news organisation owned by Thomson Reuters

LONDON: Oil prices rose sharply on Thursday, supported by supply risks as the market assesses the fallout from last weekend’s drone attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure.

Brent crude futures LCOc1 gained $1.78 to $65.38 a barrel by 1219 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude CLc1 was up $1.28 at $59.39 a barrel.

The attacks knocked out around half of Saudi Arabia’s crude production and severely limited the country’s spare capacity, a cushion for oil markets in any unplanned outage.

“Global available spare capacity is extremely low at present following the weekend attacks, leaving little room for additional outages, which tends to be price supportive,” UBS oil analyst Giovanni Staunovo said.

Earlier this week Saudi Arabia set out a timeline for a resumption of full operations, saying it had restored supplies to customers at levels prior to the attacks by drawing from its oil inventories.

It said it would restore its lost production by the end of this month, and bring its output capacity back to 12 million barrels per day by the end of November.

“These plans suggest Saudi Arabia will have no spare capacity for at least the next two and a half months and therefore no way to absorb any further shocks,” consultancy Energy Aspects said.

Kuwait’s oil sector has raised its security to the highest level as a precaution, a Kuwaiti official said.

Separately, weekly data from the Energy Information Administration on U.S. oil inventories provided a mixed snapshot.

Stockpiles of crude in the United States, the world’s largest oil producer, rose by 1.1 million barrels last week against analysts’ expectations for a drop of 2.5 million barrels.

However, stocks at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for benchmark futures, fell to their lowest since October 2018.

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