Brent crude oil, the world’s international oil benchmark, jumped towards $58 a barrel on Monday – its highest level since January – and was on course to close at the highest level since 2015.
Oil has been boosted by signs the massive crude glut built up since mid-2014 is slowly being drawn down, as producers cut supplies and robust demand eat into the surplus.
BP’s top oil trader in Asia told an FT conference on Monday that the “rebalancing” was well underway.
“The market is in rebalancing mode,” said Janet Kong, speaking at the FT Commodities Asia Summit in Singapore on Monday. “We are at a juncture where we are going to see continued inventory draws.”
Prices were given an additional boost on Monday by threats from Turkey to Iraqi Kurdistan, which is holding an independence referendum.
President Tayyip Erdogan warned Erbil that Turkey controls the pipelines through which the autonomous region’s oil reaches international markets.
“We have the tap. The moment we close the tap, then it’s done,” President Erdogan said, though he stopped short of saying he had decided to block the roughly 550,000 barrels a day of Kurdish oil that flows to his country’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
At 12:30pm London time Brent was up 1.3 per cent at $57.60 a barrel, slightly off its high for the day of $57.64 a barrel. It has climbed more than 30 per cent since January.
Brent hit its year-high of $58.37 a barrel on January 3, the first day of trading for 2017, but closed that day at $55.47. The last time it closed above $57 a barrel was more than two years ago.
Brent’s premium over US rival West Texas Intermediate expanded on Monday to as wide as $6.78 a barrel, the largest since August 2015.
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