Crude oil prices held overnight gains into Europe Wednesday, climbing toward $113 a barrel from a one-month high on prospects for an easing of a supply bottleneck to refiners in Texas causing a supply glut in Cushing, Oklahoma, while industry data that showed a drop in U.S. stocks.
- ICE Brent crude rose 0.25% or 0.28 points to trade at $ 112.90
- NYMEX WTI crude aslo added 0.26% or 1.21 points to trade at $ 97.25
U.S. crude oil built on a more than $2 jump in the previous session, after TransCanada said it would begin operations at its Keystone Gulf Coast pipeline on Jan. 3, carrying oil from Cushing, Okla., to Port Arthur, Texas. TransCanada had said in October that the 700,000-barrel-a-day pipeline was nearly finished but hadn`t given a specific start date.
In other bullish news, the American Petroleum Institute (API) said late Tuesday that crude oil stocks fell by 12.4 million barrels last week. Stockpiles of distillate fuels, which include diesel and heating oil, rose by 540,000 barrels, compared with expectations for a near 1.8 million-barrel drop, the API data showed.
Iran, Iraq to boost output by 1 million barrels per day
Crude gains were limited by comments from Iran and Iraq on plans to increase output by about 1 million barrels per day each. The comments came ahead of Wednesday`s meeting in Vienna of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Comments from OPEC` ministers underlined expectations for no change in OPEC`s output policy at 30 million barrels per day for the first half of 2014, as OPEC`s largest producer, Saudi Arabia is expected to face calls to curb flows to keep prices near current levels.
Saudi Arabia`s oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, told reporters "the market is in the best situation it can be," and said rising global oil demand could accommodate extra Iranian and Iraqi barrels.
- Natural gas is trading at $ 3.988 per cubic feet, edging 0.30% up
- Gasoline is trading at $ 2.7444 per cubic feet after rising 0.76%
- Heating oil (diesel) is trading at $ 3.0731 a gallon, gaining 0.26%
U.S. EIA report, growth data eyed
The closely-watched report from the U.S. government Energy Information Administration (EIA) is due later in the session, where analysts expects U.S. oil inventories to drop in the week ended Nov. 29.
The EIA report may show crude stockpiles dropped by for the first time in almost three months after the report showed last week showed that crude oil inventories rose by 3 million barrels for the week to Nov
Investors will watch U.S. third-quarter GDP data due on Thursday and non-farm payrolls for November on Friday for clues on whether strength in the world`s biggest economy could be enough to prompt the Federal Reserve to announce tapering of its monetary stimulus at its meeting on Dec. 17-18.