By Grant Smith Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Oil rose for the first time in four days in New York as rising equities and a weaker dollar tempered concern that the restart of a crude pipeline in the U.S. will add to excess supplies. Futures are heading for a 1.7 percent decline this week after Enbridge Energy Partners LP received government approval to resume flowing oil on their Line 6A, which supplies refineries in the Midwest. The system will begin operating today, the company said. Oil capped its weekly decline as better-than-forecast company earnings buoyed equity indexes. “The oil price will remain stuck in a $70 to $80 range,” said Tobias Merath, head of commodity research at Credit Suisse Group AG in Zurich. “At first it looked like the Enbridge repairs would take a long time. Now it seems it will go fairly fast. Markets are very well-supplied and U.S. demand is lackluster.” The October contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange advanced as much as 63 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $75.20 a barrel and was at $75.17 as of 11:01 a.m. London time. Brent crude for November settlement traded up 87 cents at $79.35 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 Index climbed 1 percent to 266.21 in London, on track for a third week of gains. The dollar slipped 0.4 percent against the euro to $1.3127. Pipeline Rupture Oil futures topped $78 a barrel this week following the closure on Sept. 9 of Enbridge’s 466-mile (750-kilometer) Line 6A. The pipe spilled about 6,100 barrels of oil from a section in Romeoville, Illinois, about 30 miles southwest of Chicago. The 34-inch line runs from Superior, Wisconsin, to Griffith, Indiana, and can carry 670,000 barrels a day of crude, equal to more than one-third of Midwest imports. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said in a report today that the pipeline’s closure will keep U.S. crude oil imports at reduced levels in coming weeks. “As the tide turns, we will see lower inventories and shifting sentiment send WTI crude oil prices into a $85-$95 per barrel trading range in coming months,” according to the report. The discount for October delivery oil to December supplies has increased as traders expect a short-lived disruption. This price structure is known as contango. The difference has widened from $1.81 a barrel to $2.98 today. “The contango has widened back out again,” said Michael Haigh, global head of commodities research at Standard Chartered Plc in Singapore. “That’s the market’s way of saying people are bidding for storage again and things can go down.” OPEC will reduce crude shipments by 1.2 percent this month as the global recovery slows and refiners in the U.S. and Europe finish maintenance, Oil Movements said, the ninth weekly decline reported by the tanker-tracker. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which supplies about 40 percent of the world’s crude oil, will ship 23.2 million barrels a day in the four weeks to Oct. 2, down from 23.47 million in the month to Sept. 4, the Halifax, England-based consultant said yesterday in a report. The data exclude Ecuador and Angola. To contact the reporter on this story: Grant Smith in London at gsmith52@bloomberg.net

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