Oil prices moved up further, reaching a three-week high, after Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter of crude oil, declared that it would continue to restrict oil shipments until OPEC reaches its goal of reducing the world supply of crude oil.<\/p>\n
US crude oil rose by nearly 4 cents, to trade at $63.59 a barrel, while Brent crude fell about 3 cents, trading at $67.28 a barrel. However, last week Brent crude also rose by 4%.<\/p>\n
Oil prices received support after Saudi Oil Minister Khalid Al-Falih’s comments on Saturday, pointing out that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s crude production between January and March will be below the target ceiling. Exports will also be 7 million bpd short on average. On another hand, an international report said that China will continue to play a major role in driving demand for crude oil, due to the large growth in Chinese refineries, thanks to large import quotas. The report said that 2018 will be a year of extensive activity in Chinese refineries, indicating that this growth was widespread and is exceeding previous expectations. It also pointed out that the Chinese government increased its share of oil imports by 55% compared to 2017.<\/p>\n
The new government arrangements announced by the Ministry of Commerce in early November, allow non-governmental refineries to import 142.42 million tons of crude oil this year, compared to 91.73 tons in 2017.<\/p>\n
Another report confirmed that oil production is still high in the markets, but low prices and continuing pipeline problems in Canada and the United States negatively impact the industry. It was noted that the demand for crude oil will be good this year, and gas will stay in the forefront on the long run. The report pointed out that some estimates predicted a slowdown in economic growth in some economic forces, because of the possibility of slow growth in energy demand, noting that last year’s data revealed the inaccuracy of these estimates, as the strength of China’s economy is much better than many from previous forecasts.<\/p>\n
In a related context, crude oil prices started to become more stable after reaching several record highs, supported by the statements of Saudi Arabia and OPEC’s efforts to control the oil supply in cooperation with independent producers. Analysts noted that US production continues to achieve qualitative and quantitative leaps, which has reportedly concerned many international organizations, such as the Energy Agency and OPEC. These organizations constantly adjust their forecasts for US production flows, which already exceeded the level of 10 million barrels per day and is likely to continue the march to 11 million barrels per day. It was also pointed out that that the American production benefits from the adaptation of advanced technology and increased efficiency, as well as the implementation of several acquisitions successful mergers with the aim of making the companies more powerful and tough in the face of market variables, pointing out that in contrast OPEC is not to be disturbed by this boom, and sees the market as reaching full balance supported by demand growth.<\/p>\n
The price of the basket, which includes the average prices of 14 tons of production by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, has achieved its second straight rise, the daily report of OPEC said. The basket also gained about two dollars compared to the same day last week, which recorded 62.41 dollars per barrel.<\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices moved up further, reaching a three-week high, after Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter of crude oil, declared that it would continue to restrict oil shipments until OPEC reaches its goal of reducing […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[40,4],"tags":[71,42,41,44,43,45],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":413,"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions\/413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skyeconomynews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}