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Oil firms as U.S. Gulf
refineries restart, dollar softens
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 [September 07, 2017]
By Ahmad Ghaddar
LONDON (Reuters) - Brent oil prices firmed
on Thursday, hovering near 3-1/2-month highs as U.S. refiners restarting
after Tropical Storm Harvey increased their crude processing and the
U.S. dollar declined.
Brent crude futures <LCOc1> were up 28 cents at $54.48 a barrel by 1143
GMT, close to their highest since May 25.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures <CLc1> eased by 11
cents to $49.05 a barrel, near a four-week high.
U.S. Gulf Coast facilities were slowly recovering from the devastating
effects of Harvey, which hammered Louisiana and Texas almost two weeks
ago, shutting key infrastructure in the heart of the U.S. oil and
natural gas industry.
As of Wednesday, about 3.8 million barrels of daily refining capacity,
or 20 percent of the U.S. total, was shut in, though a number of
refineries and petroleum-handling ports were restarting.
Prices also received a boost from a weakening U.S. dollar. Because oil
is priced in the U.S. currency, a lower dollar makes it less expensive
for foreign buyers.
The dollar index <.DXY> was down 0.45 percent at 91.878.
At the same time, prices were weighed down by rising Libyan production
and by fears that Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean could interrupt crude
shipments in and out of the United States.
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An oilfield worker walks next to drilling rigs at an oil well
operated by Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA, in the oil rich
Orinoco belt, near Morichal at the state of Monagas April 16, 2015.
REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
Irma hit Caribbean islands overnight with wind speeds up to 185 miles per hour
(295 km/h) and was heading for Florida, where fuel shortages were reported as
retailers struggled to keep up with demand from customers filling tanks ahead of
the storm's landfall, expected this weekend.
Another Atlantic storm, Jose, is following on Irma's heels and has been upgraded
to hurricane strength by the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Yet another
hurricane, Katia, is developing in the Gulf of Mexico.
"Demand may continue to be distorted as multiple hurricanes make their way
across the Caribbean," said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at futures
brokerage OANDA.
In Libya, the Sharara oilfield, the country's largest, was resuming production
on Wednesday after the reopening of a valve on a pipeline shut by an armed group
for more than two weeks, oil industry sources said.
"The upside (to oil prices) was limited by the lifting of the force majeure of
Libya’s Sharara crude oil exports," Tamas Varga of PVM oil brokerage said.
(Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Dale Hudson
and David Goodman)
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