Investing.com - Oil prices climbed higher on Tuesday as greater optimism over the economic outlook and expectations for an extension of OPEC-led production cuts outweighed concerns about the impact of various U.S. trade disputes.
The outlook for Chinese oil demand in particular, picked up after news that China is encouraging local governments to borrow more to accelerate infrastructure investments, something that also lifted Chinese equities.
New York-traded West Texas Intermediate crude futures gained 62 cents, or 1.2%, at $53.88 a barrel by 8:12 AM ET (12:12 GMT), while Brent crude futures, the benchmark for oil prices outside the U.S., traded up 35 cents, or 0.6%, to $62.64.
Oil prices have also been supported this year by the production cut agreement between OPEC and non-member allies including Russia.
Comments from Saudi and Russian energy ministers this week have cemented market expectations that the curb will be extended despite some uncertainty surrounding the agreement.
Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said last week that an extension was “almost in the bag for OPEC” and suggested the only uncertainty was whether individual countries' output quotas needed to be tweaked.
Goldman Sachs Head of Commodity Research Jeffrey Currie told Bloomberg that current demand growth “neither will support exiting the production agreement, nor is bad enough to reinforce more cuts.”
Currie said the issue is that uncertainty over Iranian exports and growing U.S. shale output make it “increasingly difficult to know what production levels will balance the market."
There's still confusion as to the actual date when the deal will actually be reviewed. OPEC still has its meeting set for June 25 with non-member allies expected to join the following day.
Russia had reportedly been pushing for a later date due to scheduling conflicts while Alexander Novak, the country’s energy minister, had suggested that a later date would allow key participants to hold discussions at the G20 summit on June 28.
Energy Intelligence quoted OPEC sources as saying Tuesday that Iran still opposed a delay to the meeting but the current option being discussed was keeping the OPEC meeting unchanged and postponing the non-member gathering to July.
Output cut extension aside, Callum Thomas, founder of research house Topdown Charts, suggested that crude oil implied volatility has given a bullish contrarian signal which he dubbed to provide high odds for at least a short-term bounce.
Thomas pointed to other bullish factors such as geopolitical risks like a potential imminent conflict between the US and Iran, or the civil tensions in Venezuela.
“The market clearly ignored these risks on the way down, but I think it would be wrong to forget about them completely as, while these risks might not necessarily materialize tomorrow, they remain simmering in the background—and there should be some risk premium,” he said.
In other energy trading, gasoline futures rose 1.5% to $1.7561 a gallon by 8:13 AM ET (12:13 GMT), while heating oil traded up 0.7% at $1.8195 a gallon.
Lastly, natural gas futures advanced 0.5% at $2.369 per million British thermal unit.