Oil bulls beware: Saudis can keep crude anchored near $70, Barclays says

as informed in OPEC, Russia and several other producers recently agreed to increase output by 1 million barrels in order to ease oil prices away from 3½-year highs. However, Barclays said the market is underestimating the spare capacity that Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kuwait and UAE can tap. "In our view, Trump has made clear in his tweets that he is not happy with higher oil prices, which is part of a long history of targeting OPEC." Saudi Arabia is likely to start exporting more oil to the United States, which would replenish American stockpiles, Barclays said. Barclays added the Trump administration could give China and India more time to reduce their purchases of Iranian oil.

Oil notches 3-day climb as Saudi Arabia halts crude shipments through key waterway

September Brent crude futures UK:LCOU8 rose 61 cents, or 0.8%, to end at $74.54 a barrel on ICE Europe. Meanwhile, the U.S. benchmark, September West Texas Intermediate crude CLU8-0.41% rose 31 cents, or 0.5%, to $69.61 a barrel. Saudi Arabia temporarily ended oil shipments through the Bab el-Mandeb strait, which joins the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, after saying that Houthi rebels attacked two very large crude carriers operated by Saudi National Shipping Corp. in the Red Sea on Wednesday. Analysts at Commerzbank said roughly 4.8 million barrels of crude and oil products are transported through the strait each day, constituting around 10% of seaborne oil. In other energy trade, September gasoline RBU8+0.04% rose 3.15 cents to $2.117 a gallon, while September heating oil HOU8+0.08% gained 2.49 cents to $2.1809 a gallon.

Oil slides near $68 as U.S. crude stocks expand, gasoline drops

as declared in Meanwhile, an OPEC committee meeting provided little insight on how output quotas will be split between the group. The Energy Information Administration reported that U.S. crude inventories rose by 5.84 million barrels last week, confounding most analysts in a Bloomberg survey who forecast a decline. Oil production reached a record 11 million barrels a day. Along with falling refinery-utilization rates, a drop in crude exports to the lowest since April also contributed to the inventory build. Observed crude flows from Saudi Arabia slipped to 6.74 million barrels a day in the first half of July, compared with 7.26 million during the same period in June, according to Bloomberg tanker tracking.

collected by :Frank Ithan