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CRUDE
oil traded near a record in New York after rising
Tuesday as a storm forecast to produce 36- foot waves in
the North Sea forced BP Plc and ConocoPhillips to
evacuate workers and cut production.
Conoco
and BP said they started evacuating workers from some
facilities before the weather worsened.
The
North Sea produced 4.4 million barrels of oil a day last
year, more than Opec member Iran.
A US
Energy Department report later Wednesday will probably
show crude-oil supplies fell for a third week as
refiners increased production, according to survey of
analysts.
“The
supply and demand situation in the oil markets is
supertight, we really have no wriggle-room whatsoever,”
said Brian Hicks, president of the Wealth Daily
newsletter. “Any threat to supply is enough to send the
price of oil up a dollar, two dollars every single day.”
Crude
oil for December delivery was at $97.03 a barrel, up 33
cents, in after hours electronic trading on the New York
Mercantile Exchange at 8:10 a.m. in Singapore.
Tuesday,
oil rose $2.72, or 2.9 percent, to settle at $96.70 a
barrel, a record close.
Futures
climbed to $97.10 earlier in the session, the highest
intraday price since trading began in 1983.
Oil may
reach $100 by the end of the week if the North Sea storm
has a big impact on production, Hicks said in a
televised interview.
Evacuations
WORKERS
on Conoco’s Ekofisk A, B and C platforms, as well as
Eldfisk A and B, were being moved to land or to safer
North Sea sites Tuesday, said Kurt Mikkelsen, a
ConocoPhillips spokesman.
BP is
moving 150 workers from its Valhall field and expects
the platform’s 80,000 barrel-a-day oil and gas output to
come to a halt late Wednesday, spokesman Jan Erik Geirmo
said.
Brent
crude oil for December settlement rose $2.77, or 3.1
percent, to close at a record $93.26 a barrel on the
London- based ICE Futures Europe exchange Tuesday.
Brent
reached $93.56 a barrel, the highest since trading began
in 1988.
Wednesday’s Energy Department report will probably show
US oil stockpiles fell 1.5 million barrels last week,
based on the median estimate from a Bloomberg News
survey of 16 analysts.
Inventories held 312.7 million barrels on October 26,
the Energy Department reported last week.
Refiners
probably used 86.8 percent of the plant capacity, 0.6
percentage points more than a week earlier and the first
increase in four weeks, according to the survey.
---Bloomberg |
