European and American crude oil futures rose for the sixth consecutive trading day, up more than 7% since Monday, supported by OPEC’s production cuts and stable stock markets. The news that Saudi Arabia plans to reduce exports also supports the market.
On Monday, January 7, WTI crude oil futures settled at $48.52 a barrel in February 2019, up $0.56, or 1.2%, from the previous trading day, with a trading range of $48.11-49.79; Brent crude oil settled at $57.33 a barrel in March 2019, up $0.27, or 0.5%, from the previous trading day, with a trading range of $57.26-58.93.
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NEW YORK, Jan. 7 (Reuters) – Oil prices rose slightly on Monday, rebounding further from a year-and-a-half low hit in December last year, supported by OPEC output cuts and stock market stabilization.
Crude oil futures prices have risen by more than 7% since last Monday.
“Market momentum is returning to very low price levels,” said Olivier Jakob, a strategist at Petromatrix.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Saudi Arabia plans to cut its crude oil exports to about 7.1 million barrels a day by the end of January, which supports oil prices.
OPEC and its allies are trying to curb the surge in global oil supply, driven mainly by the United States, which produced more than 11 million barrels of crude oil a day in 2018. Record crude oil production boosted U.S. crude oil inventories.
According to a Reuters survey last week, OPEC’s crude oil supply fell by 460,000 barrels a day in December to 32.68 million barrels, a decrease by Saudi Arabia, an exporter of OPEC’s crude oil.
Traders quoted data from Genscape, a market intelligence company, as saying that U.S. crude oil futures delivery point, Cushing, Oklahoma, had a 565,000 barrel decline in crude oil inventories from Tuesday to Friday.
Stock market rallies also support oil prices.
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Goldman Sachs said in a report that it lowered its average Brent crude oil forecast for 2019 from $70 to $62.50 a barrel because of “strong macro resistance since 2015.”
Societe Generale cut its Brent crude oil price forecast by $9 to $64 a barrel in 2019 and the US crude oil price forecast by $9 to $57 a barrel.