By Kenneth Rapoza, Contributor
Anyone in the northeast filling up their house with heating oil knows, oil prices are going higher. What investors know is that crude oil markets have had quite the week, with Brent oil futures settling above the $118 per barrel on most days. With the United States being a net importer of oil, of course, that European Brent crude price is more important that West Texas Intermediate, which is now trading at $96 a barrel. ven though macroeconomic sentiment weakened slightly on the back of poor fourth quarter GDP numbers in Europe, oil continues to get price support from a solid underlying demand-supply equation and ongoing geopolitical elements in the middle east. In this context, last week saw yet another failure in talks between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the government of Iran. No date has been set for future talks and the failure in a negotiated agreement comes just two weeks before more meetings, this time between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, U.K. and the U.S.). That in mind, Barclays Capital told clients in a note on Feb. 15 that supply constraints would serve as strong support for oil prices in the weeks ahead. The full set of supply figures for North Sea oil (Brent basis) for 2012 was released by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate and these show the country’s production averaging 1.91 million barrels daily of oil and oil equivalents over the year. That figure stands at historic lows and 13% below the country’s own production expectations for the year. Over 2012, output was negatively affected by a multiplicity of technical problems at a variety of fields, including Hog, Oseberg, Vigdis and Troll. Preliminary data for January show total output at 1.85 mb/d, lower on the year by an impressive 255 thousand b/d, though 1% higher than the Directorate’s forecast production for the month. Then there are the ongoing outages in Brazil, Syria and Sudan in non-OPEC nations. As a result, Barclays’ tally of non-OPEC supply disruptions now stands at 875 thousand barrels daily, about 256 thousand less barrels of oil less than the previous month. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
