Oil gains on Libya field halt as Geopolitical risk resurfaces

Tokyo - Oil climbed as geopolitical risk resurfaced, with a halt at Libya’s biggest crude field sparking speculation that supply will tighten and help reduce a global glut.

Futures in New York rose as much as 0.8% after a 3.6% decline last week. Production is said to have been halted at the Sharara oil field, the largest in the North African nation, on Sunday after protests disrupted output at another of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) member’s deposits last month.

Oil has been struggling to regain the highs of January as rising US output challenges efforts by OPEC and its allies to ease a supply glut. Surging production from Libya has also been a thorn for the oil market, with concern that further growth may take the country to a level that would test a pledge made to OPEC to help limit an oversupply.

"Oil prices are responding to the tightening of supply due to the Libyan production halt," Takayuki Nogami, chief economist at state-backed Japan Oil, Gas & Metals National, said by phone.

"Geopolitical risks in Libya were thought to have declined but that turned out to be wrong. Even if the Sharara field starts production again, the risk of another halt remains."

Prices climb

West Texas Intermediate for April delivery rose as much as 50 cents to $61.75 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange and traded at $61.53 at 1:18pm. in Tokyo. The contract fell 3.6% last week, the first weekly decline in three weeks. Total volume traded was about 11 percent below the 100-day average.

Brent for May settlement added 27 cents to at $64.64 on the London-based ICE Futures Europe Exchange. Front-month futures slipped 4.4% last week. The global benchmark traded at a $3.29 premium to May WTI.

Libya has struggled to boost oil production amid the lingering effects of civil strife that erupted earlier in the decade. Though output has risen, it remains well below the 1.8 million barrels a day Libya pumped before the ouster and killing of former leader Muammar Qaddafi.

The halt on Sunday resulted from the closing of a pipeline from Sharara to the Zawiya refinery, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

While investors focus on Libya, in the US, oil explorers boosted the number of rigs drilling for crude to 800 for the first time in almost three years, according to Baker Hughes data released on Friday.

Drillers have been accelerating exploration in an almost-unbroken streak since the beginning of November, vaulting American crude output to a record of more than 10 million barrels a day.

Other oil-market news:

CERAWeek by IHS Markit, the largest gathering of energy executives and officials in the Americas, begins on Monday, when Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo will dine with shale executives in Houston. Money manager’s boosted bets on rising WTI crude prices by the most in six weeks during the week ended February 27, according to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission China National Petroleum’s crude production may fall about 1% year-on-year in 2018, General Manager Zhang Jianhua said in Beijing.