Oil Caps Longest Rally This Year as Oversupply Anxiety Eases
Oil Holds Longest Winning Streak in Two Months on Easing Supply
(Bloomberg) -- Oil posted the longest run of gains in six months after U.S. shale explorers paused a record drilling expansion in a sign the boom may be slowing down.
Futures added as much as 2.7 percent in New York, advancing for a seventh session. Shale explorers broke the longest stretch of uninterrupted growth in three decades as rigs targeting crude fell by 2 this week, bringing the total to 756, according to Baker Hughes Inc. data reported Friday. The rig count has more than doubled from a low of 316 in May.
While prices have surged this week, oil in New York and London are still set for a loss in June -- a month in which prices typically gain. Crude futures tumbled into a bear market last week on concerns that rising global supply is offsetting cuts from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners. Bank of America Corp. became the latest in a string of banks to cut its outlook for prices this year and next.
"I don’t think everyone’s quite ready to write off the OPEC/non-OPEC accord just yet," John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York-based hedge fund, said by telephone. "And given how far we’ve fallen, you’re seeing bargain hunting by some."
West Texas Intermediate for August delivery gained $1.11 to settle at $46.04 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil is down about 9 percent this quarter.
Brent for August settlement, which expires Friday, closed 50 cents higher at $47.92 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The global benchmark is down about 9 percent this quarter and traded at a premium of $1.85 to WTI.
The rig count drop follows a report Wednesday that U.S crude output fell by the most in almost a year last week amid field maintenance in Alaska and tropical storm Cindy, while gasoline inventories fell for a second week. OPEC and its partners aren’t worried about the market recovery and don’t plan to discuss deeper cuts, said United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei.
“There is cause to be confident that the long-awaited oil market rebalancing is fast approaching,” said Stephen Brennock, an analyst at PVM Oil Associates Ltd. in London. “Doubts will linger over the staying power of this rally” and “several stumbling blocks still lie ahead of the price recovery.”
Bank of America lowered its 2017 WTI forecast to $47 and 2018 to $50, citing a continuing rise in oil output and disappointing demand. Prices will remain in contango, where near-term contracts are cheaper than long-dated ones, until year-end. Futures will only move into backwardation -- the inverse market structure that’s desired by OPEC -- by next summer, the bank said.
Oil-market news:
- Increased demand in the third and fourth quarters will help to rebalance the market, U.A.E.’s Al Mazrouei said Thursday.
- Libyan output will increase to almost 1 million barrels a day in the next few days, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified.
- Goldman Sachs analysts might not be the only ones to have incorrectly called commodity prices this year, but they are at least trying to figure out how they misjudged the market.
--With assistance from Ben Sharples and Grant Smith
To contact the reporter on this story: Meenal Vamburkar in New York at mvamburkar@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Herron at jherron9@bloomberg.net, Jim Efstathiou Jr., Jeffrey Taylor