{"id":63554,"date":"2018-04-19T11:53:12","date_gmt":"2018-04-19T11:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=63554"},"modified":"2018-04-19T11:53:12","modified_gmt":"2018-04-19T11:53:12","slug":"oil-at-fresh-highs-on-saudi-seeking-price-hike-u-s-stocks-draw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/oil-at-fresh-highs-on-saudi-seeking-price-hike-u-s-stocks-draw.html","title":{"rendered":"Oil at fresh highs on Saudi seeking price hike, U.S. stocks draw"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 18pt;color: #000000\">Oil at fresh highs on Saudi seeking price hike, U.S. stocks draw<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Oil prices rose on Thursday to their highest since late 2014 as U.S. crude inventories declined, moving closer to five-year averages, and after sources told Reuters top exporter Saudi Arabia is seeking to push oil prices higher.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">.Brent crude oil futures LCOc1 rallied as high as $74.44 a barrel, the strongest since Nov. 27, 2014, the day that OPEC decided to pump as much as it could to defend market share, sending the price to a low of $27 just over a year later.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Brent futures were at $74.35 per barrel at 0823 GMT, up 87 cents from their last close.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 rose 71 cents to $69.18 a barrel. WTI had earlier hit $69.27, its best level since Dec. 2, 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">\u201cOil prices continued to climb on Thursday as a decline in U.S. crude inventories and commentary from Saudi Arabia that it would be happy to see crude rise to $80 or even $100 helped boost prices,\u201d RBC said in a note.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other major producers including Russia started to withhold output in 2017 to rein in oversupply that had depressed prices since 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">OPEC and its partners will meet in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on April 20. OPEC will then meet on June 22 to review its oil production policy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Reuters reported on Wednesday that top oil exporter Saudi Arabia would be happy to see crude rise to $80 or even $100 a barrel, which was seen as a sign that Riyadh will seek no changes to the supply-cutting deal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">\u201cThe Saudis and their colleagues in OPEC need higher oil for their fiscal positions and the Kingdom is on a bold \u2013 and costly \u2013 reform program. So they might continue to squeeze the lemon while they have the chance,\u201d said Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at futures brokerage AxiTrader.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Since the start of the supply cuts, crude inventories have gradually declined from record levels toward long-term average levels.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">In the United States, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Wednesday that commercial crude stocks fell by 1.1 million barrels in the week to April 13, to 427.57 million barrels, close to the five-year average level of around 420 million barrels.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Further supporting oil prices is an expectation that the United States will re-introduce sanctions against Iran, OPEC\u2019s third-largest producer, which could result in further supply reductions from the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 8pt;color: #000000\">Source:-https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-global-oil\/oil-at-fresh-highs-on-saudi-seeking-price-hike-u-s-stocks-draw-idUSKBN1HQ028<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/oil-at-fresh-highs-on-saudi-seeking-price-hike-u-s-stocks-draw.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oil at fresh highs on Saudi seeking price hike, U.S. stocks draw Oil prices rose on Thursday to their highest since late 2014 as U.S. crude inventories declined, moving closer to five-year averages, and after sources told Reuters top exporter Saudi Arabia is seeking to push oil prices higher. .Brent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":63555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[146,117626,128711,30775,128710,132482],"class_list":["post-63554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-business-news","tag-business-news-today","tag-latest-and-daily-business-news","tag-latest-business-news-usa","tag-live-updates-news","tag-oil-at-fresh-highs-on-saudi-seeking-price-hike-u-s-stocks-draw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}