BLBG:Oil Falls From One-Week High as OPEC Said to Leave Production Unchanged
ld reporters at the group’s secretariat headquarters in Vienna today, before ministers began closed-door talks. “There’s going to be a great agreement. The market is very well-balanced.”
OPEC’s last meeting in June broke up without consensus when six members including Iran and Venezuela opposed a push to pump more oil by Saudi Arabia and three other Gulf nations, which went ahead with an increase to make up for missing Libyan supplies. The group will need to produce 30.1 million barrels a day next year to balance global crude supply and demand, its secretariat said. The International Energy Agency estimates that OPEC will need to pump 30.2 million barrels next year.
U.S. Inventories
Crude stockpiles in the U.S., the world’s largest oil consumer, rose 462,000 barrels last week to 334.6 million, the API said yesterday. An Energy Department report today will probably show supplies fell 2.5 million barrels, based on the median estimate of 12 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.
Gasoline inventories slid 12,000 barrels last week, the API report showed. The Bloomberg survey indicated supplies may have increased 1.2 million barrels. Implied demand for the fuel fell 2.1 percent to the lowest since August, the API said.
Crude surged as much as 3.6 percent yesterday in New York, the biggest intraday jump this month. The gain may have been the result of a mistaken purchase by a trader yesterday, according to The Schork Group Inc., an energy consultant in Villanova, Pennsylvania.
“The only reasonable conclusion is the the move was the result of a heavy finger on the bid button,” the consultant said in an e-mailed report. “The question is whether or not the keyboard stroke was intentional.”
Strait of Hormuz
The Schork Group said it is “highly skeptical” the market responded to reports from Iran’s Fars news agency that the country would simulate shutting the Strait of Hormuz. About 15.5 million barrels a day, or a sixth of global oil shipments, is transported through the waterway, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Closing the strait to shipping is not on Iran’s agenda, the state-run Al Alam news channel reported today, citing the Iranian Foreign Ministry. Iran believes the region needs stability and calm, ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said, according to the channel’s website.
Iran, OPEC’s second-biggest producer after Saudi Arabia, supplied about 5 percent of the world’s crude last year, according to BP Plc’s annual Statistical Review of World Energy.
Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said he doesn’t expect the European Union to impose sanctions against imports of the nation’s crude.
“We don’t think they would put sanctions on Iran’s oil,” Qasemi said today in Vienna. “It’s not a very wise decision,” and would result in a “lot of cost” for the market, he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sherry Su in London at lsu23@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alexander Kwiatkowski at akwiatkowsk2@bloomberg.net; Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.netB
