Oil Rises to Five-Week High Near $50 on Stronger Demand Outlook

(Bloomberg) 

Oil rose to a five-week high near $50 a barrel after the International Energy Agency and OPEC boosted their forecasts for crude demand.

Futures gained 1.3 percent in New York, nearing $50 for the first time since Aug. 10. Global demand will climb this year by the most since 2015, the IEA said Wednesday. OPEC on Tuesday raised estimates for the amount of crude it will need to supply in 2018 on stronger consumption from Europe and China. U.S. oil output gained last week as operations returned after Hurricane Harvey.

Oil in New York has fallen about 7 percent this year as the effort to drain a global glut by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and partners including Russia is stifled by increasing output from the U.S. to Libya. OPEC and its allies are discussing extending supply cuts past the end of March by more than three months, according to people familiar with the matter.

The IEA report “was taken as confirmation of the prevalent supply-tightening narrative, that that oil surplus is slowly disappearing,” said Norbert Ruecker, head of commodity research at Julius Baer Group Ltd. Still, crude is “trading at the upper end of a fundamentally justified price range” and the “upcoming seasonal demand soft patch is set to create near-term headwinds.”

West Texas Intermediate for October delivery rose 62 cents to $49.92 on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 1:28 p.m. in London. Total volume traded was about 14 percent above the 100-day average. Prices rose $1.07 to $49.30 on Wednesday, the highest close since Aug. 9.

See also: Harvey and Irma’s Impact on U.S. Supplies Shown Through Charts

Brent for November settlement increased 38 cents to $55.54 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. On Wednesday, prices added 89 cents, or 1.6 percent, to settle at $55.16, the highest since April 17. The global benchmark crude traded at a premium of $5.21 to November WTI.

The IEA increased its estimate for demand growth in 2017 by 100,000 barrels a day to 1.6 million a day, or 1.7 percent, according to its monthly report. The re-balancing of oversupplied world markets is continuing, the agency said.

Oil-market news:

Saudi Arabia is preparing contingency plans for a possible delay to the initial public offering of its state-owned oil company by a few months into 2019, according to people familiar with the matter. U.S. crude output rose by 572,000 barrels a day to 9.35 million a day, while stockpiles expanded for a second week, according to an Energy Information Administration report Wednesday. China’s crude production fell 3.1 percent year-on-year in August to the lowest since March 2009, according to Bloomberg calculations based on data from the National Bureau of Statistics. Nigeria is unwilling to cap its oil production until at least the second quarter of next year, and then only if it’s managed to keep output consistently near its target for six months, according to the nation’s petroleum minister. OPEC data from so-called secondary sources shows compliance with the cuts rose to 96 percent in August, according to a person familiar with the matter.