Investing.com – Crude oil prices settled above $60 for the first time since mid-2015 as traders cheered signs of tighter US production amid ongoing North Sea and Libya supply disruptions.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange crude futures for January delivery rose 1% to settle at $60.42 a barrel, while on London's Intercontinental Exchange, Brent rose 0.68% to trade at $66.61 a barrel. Crude oil prices are up 12.5% since the beginning of the year.
Oil prices soared as a report from Baker Hughes showed the North American oil rig count, an early indicator of future output, remained unchanged at 747, fuelling investor expectations that US production is tightening.
The stall in US rig counts comes as an Energy Information Administration released Thursday showed a decline in US domestic oil production to 9.75 million barrels’ bpd from 9.79 million bpd in the previous week.
Also supporting oil prices were ongoing pipeline outages in Libya and the North Sea.
The North Sea the Forties pipeline system with a 450,000 bpd capacity was shut earlier this month due to a crack, while, a pipeline bombing in Libya took an estimated 90,000 barrels per day (bpd) off-line.
Sentiment on oil has turned bullish in recent months as investors continued to expect OPEC and some non-OPEC members to comply strongly with the deal to curb output.
In November, OPEC agreed to extend joint production cuts with Russia of 1.8 million barrels per day through 2018.