Oil prices dipped late last week after large builds in key US product inventories briefly outweighed the ongoing threat to supply from instability in the Middle East but remain some 30% above their June lows. Brent settled at $57.23 per barrel Thursday, up only 98￠/bbl on the week, while US domestic price-pin WTI gained 69￠/bbl to close at $51.29/bbl. Brent had traded up to a two-week high of $58.54/bbl on Oct. 18, as Iraqi government forces took control of oil facilities near Kirkuk in the autonomous Kurdish region, hitting oil exports through Turkey. US President Donald Trump’s refusal to certify Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal also lifted oil prices. Opec Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo struck a positive note on oil markets at last week’s Oil & Money conference in London. He said that world demand is on track to cross the 100 million barrel per day mark for the first time in history in 2020. Barkindo added that those who had been skeptical about Opec’s decision last year in Algiers to curb production and the 'historic' move to bring on board non-Opec countries had been proven wrong. 'I am happy to stand here today and say that those skeptics were totally mistaken,' he said. 'There is no doubt that the market is rebalancing at an accelerating pace. Stability is steadily returning and there is far more light at the end of the dark tunnel we have been traveling down for the past three years,' he told an audience of top industry executives at the conference co-hosted by Jet Fuel Intelligence publisher Energy Intelligence and the New York Times.
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