Crude oil rose to a six-month high above a barrel after the Saudi minister said fuel demand has started to recover.

Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told reporters in Vienna for this week’s OPEC meeting that there are signs of increasing demand in Asia. In the U.S., a report tomorrow is forecast to show gasoline supplies fell a fifth week amid growing optimism the worst of the recession is over.

“It looks like we won’t see any significant deterioration in demand anymore, hence OPEC is bullish,” said Andrey Kryuchenkov, an analyst at VTB Capital in London. “But we still need to see improving gasoline demand in the U.S.”

Crude oil for July delivery rose as much as , or 1.6 percent, to .45 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That’s the highest since Nov. 13. Oil was at .8001 at 1:48 p.m. in London. Crude rose above its 200-day moving average for the first time since September, a sign that prices may rally further.

The U.S. Conference Board’s sentiment index surged to 54.9, more than forecast and the biggest increase since 2003, the New York-based research group said yesterday.

“It’s not an overnight process, but we are slowly stepping away from the Armageddonic views of last October,” said Olivier Jakob, managing director of consultants Petromatrix Gmbh in Zug, Switzerland. “If higher confidence starts to translate into higher consumption, then that missing part of the oil demand equation could start to bottom.”

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, responsible for 40 percent of global crude supply, is likely to keep output quotas unchanged for a second time this year as recovering oil prices eliminate the need for new cuts, according to a Bloomberg survey published on May 22.

Asian Recovery

OPEC has “no need” to cut oil production because there are signs of a recovery in demand in Asia, though not the U.S. and Europe, al-Naimi said in Vienna, where the group is meeting.

Saudi Arabia is the biggest and most influential member of OPEC. The producer group is likely to keep daily output quotas unchanged at 24.845 million barrels when it meets tomorrow, according to a Bloomberg News survey of 27 analysts.

“If they do keep production at current levels, then it should push oil back down, at least below ,” said Mike Sander, an investment adviser at Sander Capital Advisors Inc. in Seattle.

U.S. gasoline inventories probably fell for a fifth week as fuel deliveries rose to meet holiday demand and refinery operations slowed, a Bloomberg News survey showed.

Crude supplies in the U.S. probably rose by 50,000 barrels in the week ended May 22 from 368.5 million the previous week, according to the median of 10 estimates by analysts before an Energy Department report tomorrow.

Crude Stockpiles

Total U.S. daily fuel consumption averaged 18.3 million barrels in the four weeks ended May 15, down 7.6 percent from a year earlier, the department said last week.

Crude oil stockpiles held by the 28 nations advised by the International Energy Agency rose to 62 days of demand in the first quarter, according to the agency’s report earlier this month. That is up from 54 days in the year-earlier period and 58 days in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Stockpiles of gasoline probably dropped 1.65 million barrels from 204 million the prior week, according to the median of 10 estimates by analysts. Wholesalers and retailers increase motor fuel deliveries before the summer, when Americans take to the highways for vacations.

Brent crude for July settlement rose as much as .05, or 1.7 percent, to .29 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange. It was at .60 a barrel at 1:43 p.m. London time.

Bloomberg
27 May 2009

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Nigeria's main rebel group said it destroyed several major oil pipelines in southern Nigeria early Monday in response to a military offensive.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said it had put "out of operation" a major Chevron oil storage facility by destroying the pipelines and flow stations that feed it.

"Fighters from MEND destroyed major trunk lines," the group said in a statement emailed to media.

US oil giant Chevron made no immediate comment but MEND has staged several attacks on international oil facilities in southern Delta state as part of its campaign to get what it calls a fairer distribution of the oil wealth to local people.

Nigeria's oil production has been cut by a quarter because of the militant campaign over the past three years.

MEND -- which named the affected flow stations as Alero creek, Otunana, Abiteye, Makaraba and Dibi -- said its latest attacks were in response to a government offensive over the past 10 days in Delta State.

It said it was "applying the same measure of treatment the impoverished oil bearing communities suffered in the hands of government troops by ensuring huge collateral damage."

Local media have quoted residents fleeing Gbaramatu Kingdom, the main target area of the military operations, as accusing armed forces of indiscriminate bombing of civilians and burning of homes.

The Joint Task Force, the army-police unit deployed in the region, says it is only conducting a "cordon and search" operation and focusing only "on the areas where there are militants and their hideouts where hostgages were being kept".

The JTF says it has released groups of Filipino, Ukranian and Nigerian hostages seized in raids on vessels. Most recently it says it rescued three Filipino seamen on Saturday and a further three on Sunday.

MEND disputed that the three freed on Sunday were rescued.

"The JTF did not free the remaining three hostages as being claimed...we dropped them off at the Oporoza jetty," the group statement said.

MEND and the JTF blame each other for starting the new violence. MEND accuses the armed forces of having launched an unprovoked attack on the camp of an allied armed group while JTF says one of its patrols was fired on my militants.

Gbaramatu Kingdom is accessible only by boat and residents of Warri, the nearest major town, say the army has stopped boat traffic in the area.

Hostage taking is common in the Niger Delta, with several hundred people, most but not all of them linked to the oil industry, kidnapped there in the past three years.

MEND renewed its threat of bringing Nigeria's oil industry to a standstill.

"The Joint Task Force has been chasing shadows for the past two weeks and has not achieved any military success. We will continue our cat and mouse tactics with them until oil export ceases completely," the group threatened.

International oil prices have spiked in recent days, partly because of the MEND attacks and the military offensive in Nigeria's main oil producing region.

Unrest in the Niger Delta region has reduced Nigeria's daily output to 1.76 million barrels compared with 2.6 million barrels in January 2006.

Nigeria has been overtaken by Angola as Africa's main oil producer.

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Oil producers have cancelled or delayed 170 billion dollars' worth of investment in recent months, the IEA said in comments published Monday, underlining the impact of the economic crisis.

Falling oil prices, tight credit markets and slumping demand have stunted investment, the International Energy Agency's chief economist Fatih Birol was quoted as saying by France's specialist Petrol Industry Bulletin.

"In recent months, petrol groups have cancelled or postponed about 170 billion dollars (122 billion euros) in investment," he said, adding that the cancelled and postponed projects cut production by 6.2 million barrels per day.

Daily world oil production is about 83 million barrels per day, according to the IEA, which has also predicted demand will drop by three percent this year, the sharpest fall since 1981.

Birol said oil investment was hit hardest in North America and the North Sea, while the Middle East was relatively spared since production costs are lower there.

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BEIJING, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Crude oil prices are likely to continue rising, but there will be no major spike in the market in the coming months as world oil consumption still remains weak, analysts said.

Global crude prices, which plummeted from 147.27 U.S. dollars per barrel to below 40 dollars last year, have witnessed a moderate yet steady rebound over the past months, reaching 61.5 dollars on Thursday at the New York oil market, marking a three-month high.

The reason for the recent rally is that the U.S. government reported a surprise decline in crude and gasoline inventories as the driving season approaches, Wall Street Strategies' senior research analyst, Conley Turner, said.

"The rally in oil is also supported by the fact that there is a sense of growing optimism among market participants that the economy is not getting worse and is in fact, turning a corner," Turner said.

However, analysts also warned that the current oil price levels were not in line with the underlying weak global economic conditions. They said that runaway crude oil prices were therefore unlikely to be seen in the coming months.

"If you have a look at the fundamentals in the market at the moment, the inventories in the U.S. are still at 19-year highs and there's no real indication that demand has re-entered the market yet," Ben Westmore, an energy analyst at the National Australia Bank, said.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday that global oil demand would hit a 28-year low this year because optimism about an economic recovery was not reviving the appetite for energy.

The rebound in oil prices is largely connected with the performances of the financial markets, instead of the balance of supply and demand, the Paris-based organization said, adding that the world's oil demand has shown no signs of recovery with the absence of fundamentals to back the oil market.

Xie Guozhong, an independent economist in China, also believes that the recent price rebound cannot be explained by analyzing the balance of supply and demand, as financial markets play a major role in pushing up prices.

The large scale stimulus packages launched by some developed economies boosted capital flow into the international oil market raising prices, Xie, a former Morgan Stanley chief economist for the Asia-Pacific region, said.

Judging by the current global economic situation, analysts said oil prices may occasionally rise above 63 U.S. dollars per barrel, but it was unlikely to see any major price hikes this year. They said for the most part oil prices would fluctuate between 50 and 60 dollars.

According to a short-term outlook released last week by the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Energy Department, prices are expected to average about 55 dollars per barrel for the rest of 2009, and 58 dollars per barrel in 2010.

www.chinaview.cn

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