|
Benchmark Brent crude oil <LCOc1> was down 30 cents a barrel at
$84.28 by 1105 GMT. On Thursday, Brent fell by $1.34 a barrel or
1.6 percent, but the contract remained on course for a gain of
around 2 percent for the week.
U.S. light crude <CLc1> was up 10 cents at $74.43, a gain of
more than 1.5 percent since last Friday.
"The market mood is exceptionally bullish, with fears growing
that the U.S. demands for an Iran oil embargo could cause a
significant supply shortfall," said Norbert Rucker, head of
macro and commodity research at Julius Baer.
Both benchmarks retreated on Thursday following a rise in U.S.
oil inventories and after Saudi Arabia and Russia said they
would raise output to at least partly make up for expected
disruptions from Iran, OPEC's third-largest producer.
But the pull-back did little to dent a 15-20 percent rise in oil
prices since mid-August, which has pushed them to their highest
since 2014.
Washington wants governments and companies around the world to
stop buying Iranian oil from Nov. 4 to put pressure on Tehran to
renegotiate a nuclear deal.
Many analysts say they expect Iranian exports to drop by around
1 million barrels per day (bpd).
"Iranian exports could fall below 1 million bpd in November,"
U.S. bank Jefferies said. "It now appears that only China and
Turkey may be willing to risk U.S. retaliation by transacting
with Iran."
The investment bank said there was enough oil to meet demand,
but "global spare capacity is dwindling to the lowest level that
we can document".
Speculators have accumulated bullish long positions, betting on
a further rise in prices, amounting to almost 1.2 billion
barrels of oil.
But Goldman Sachs says the uptrend may not last.
"While upside price risks will prevail for now, fundamental data
outside of Iran has not turned bullish in our view," Goldman
said in a note to clients.
"We expect fundamentals to gradually become binding by early
2019 as new spare capacity comes online... pointing to the
global market eventually returning into a modest surplus in
early 2019."
(Reporting by Christopher Johnson in London and Henning
Gloystein in Singapore; editing by Dale Hudson and Jan Harvey)
[© 2018 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2018 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
 |
|
