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FILE PHOTO: The sun is seen behind a crude oil pump jack in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas, USA. USA, November 22, 2019. REUTERS / Angus Mordant
TOKYO (Reuters) – Oil prices rose on Friday, extending gains from the previous session, driven by lower-than-expected gains in US crude inventories. USA pandemic.
Brent LCOc1 crude for July delivery, which began trading on Friday as the new first-month contract, rose $ 1.10, or 4.2%, to $ 27.58 a barrel at 0013 GMT. Brent gained 12% on Thursday.
US crude oil CLc1 for June delivery rose $ 1.37, or 7.3%, to $ 20.21 per barrel, having gained 25% in the previous session.
“This is a second week in a row of inventory and product demand figures suggesting a bottom of the US market,” said Stephen Innes, chief market strategist at AxiCorp.
Data from the US Energy Information Administration. USA They showed that crude inventories rose 9 million barrels last week to 527.6 million barrels, less than the 10.6 million barrel rise that analysts had forecast in a Reuters poll. [EIA/S]
The other significant support factor on Friday was the official start of production cuts agreed between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other major producers such as Russia, a group known as OPEC +, to counter the drop in demand. .
“OPEC + quotas will take effect on Friday, suggesting that short-term supply conditions have probably peaked,” said Innes of AxiCorp.
The OPEC + agreement covers a cut in production of almost 10 million barrels per day (bpd), a record level.
However, that falls short of the approximately 30 million bpd of demand that has evaporated amid the coronavirus pandemic, as much of the world’s population remains under some form of economic and social blockade.
Report by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell
