Oil futures prices rise to greet the New Year.

摘要

US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and UK Brent crude oil benchmark prices increased in the week to Jan. 5, buoyed by protests in Iran, a stockdraw in the US, and some positive economic data. Markets were closed on Monday, Jan. 1 for the New Year's holiday. Oil prices commenced the shortened trading week on Tuesday with slight dips, but for the first time since 2014 both WTI and Brent opened a new year above $60/bbl. The dips were largely due to the restart of two major crude pipelines, one in the UK and another in Libya. The 450K-b/d Forties pipeline at the North Sea resumed full operations on Dec. 30, following an outage several weeks earlier. The outage at the pipeline, operated by Ineos, had lent support to oil prices, particularly Brent. "The resolution of the North Sea pipeline issue is having the expected result that the Brent-WTI spread is narrowing today," said David Thompson with Powerhouse. Additionally, repairs had been made to a Libyan oil pipeline, following damage sustained by a suspected attack in the week to Dec. 29.