Crude Oil Settles Lower, Concerns Grow Over Uptick in Global Supplies

Investing.com – Crude oil prices settled lower on Thursday as investors fretted over a potential uptick in global supply amid reports that Turkey and Iraq discussed resuming exports from the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange for December delivery fell by 19 cents to settle at $55.14 a barrel, while on London’s Intercontinental Exchange, lost 52 cents to trade at $61.35 a barrel.

A discussion between Iraq and Turkey on resuming Kirkuk oil export from the Ceyhan pipeline sparked fears of oversupply as many said a possible uptick in exports would forced OPEC to rein in production. The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline exports about 600,000 barrels of oil, but, that, has fallen recently following is the average production from there [Kirkuk] – recently that has been below 100k,” traders said.

“The priority is to resume oil exports from Kirkuk through the Iraqi-Turkish pipeline once it has been rehabilitated or replaced by a new one,” Iraq’s Oil Minister Jabbar al-Luaibi said.

That added to recent fears that rising U.S. production would dampened the impact of Opec’s production cuts, which so far are widely believed to be moving oil markets closer to rebalancing.

Preliminary U.S. production figures showed weekly output rose by 25,000 to an all-time high of 9.65 million barrels per day, as crude oil stockpiles rose for second week in arrow, the Energy Information Administration Energy Agency said.

Inventories of U.S. crude rose by roughly 1.9 million barrels for the week ended Nov. 11, missing expectations of 2.2 barrels.

Data pointing to rising U.S. output comes ahead of an OPEC meeting on Nov. 30 in Vienna, where it is expected the oil-cartel will extend its output-cut agreement beyond the March 2018 deadline.

In May, Opec producers agreed to extend production cuts for a period of nine months until March, but stuck to production cuts of 1.2 million bpd agreed in November last year.

Disclaimer: Fusion Media would like to remind you that the data contained in this website is not necessarily real-time nor accurate. All CFDs (stocks, indexes, futures) and Forex prices are not provided by exchanges but rather by market makers, and so prices may not be accurate and may differ from the actual market price, meaning prices are indicative and not appropriate for trading purposes. Therefore Fusion Media doesn`t bear any responsibility for any trading losses you might incur as a result of using this data.

Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.