From Reuters
Oil prices hit six-month highs on Monday on worries about global supply outages and as long-time bear Goldman Sachs sounded more positive on the market, although a stockpile build at the U.S. storage hub for crude futures pared gains.
Expectations of resumption in oil exports from a Libyan port, a ramp up in Nigerian crude production by Exxon Mobil Corp and an improved oil-for-loans deal reached by Venezuela with China furthered the tempered the bullish theme in oil.
Brent crude futures were up $1.03, or 2.2 percent, at $48.86 per barrel by 1:55 p.m. EDT (1755 GMT). It came just 53 cents short of hitting $50 a barrel at the session high.
U.S. crude’s West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures rose by $1.28, or 2.8 percent, to $47.49.
Crude futures have rallied for most of the past two weeks from a combination of Nigerian, Venezuelan and other outages, declining U.S. production and virtually frozen inflows of Canadian crude after wildfires in Alberta’s oil sands region.
The disruptions triggered a U-turn in the outlook for the oil market from Goldman Sachs, which had long warned of global storage hitting capacity and of another oil price crash to as low as $20 per barrel.
“The oil market has gone from nearing storage saturation to being in deficit much earlier than we expected,” said Goldman, which added that supply likely shifted into a deficit in May.
