By Virginia Harrison, MarketWatch
SYDNEY (MarketWatch) — Crude-oil futures dipped in Asian trading on Monday, despite the world’s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, saying it had cut output on the belief the market is oversupplied.
Benchmark light, sweet crude for May delivery CLK11 -0.59% slipped 73 cents or 0.7%, to $108.82 early Monday in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
On Sunday, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister reportedly said the nation cut its oil output by around 800,000 barrels a day in March, due to oversupply.
Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said that April production was expected to rise slightly from March levels, according to the reports.
Last month, Saudi Arabia’s output reached 8.292 million barrels a day, down from 9.125 million in February, the reports said. Some major oil-consuming nations had hoped Saudi output could help push currently high oil prices lower.
The comments came as geopolitical tensions and violent attacks continued across the Middle East and North Africa over the weekend, stoking uncertainty in oil markets and supporting prices over recent months. Read more about Mideast and North African unrest.
“The market remains far from any equilibrium, supply losses have not been made good, geopolitical risk remains elevated, spare capacity is still falling, and the very limited movement along the demand curve in response to higher prices has thus far been an order of magnitude less than the supply-side outages,” analysts at Barclays Capital said in a research note.
However, concerns eased about violence in presidential elections in Nigeria, a major oil exporter, with CNN reporting the vote was “largely peaceful.”
Media reports following the Saturday election said incumbent Goodluck Jonathan was likely to win reelection, with official results possible as early as Monday. See report on concerns surrounding Nigerian election.
