Oil prices held above $50 a barrel yesterday following a 3% jump a day earlier on the back of Brazilian and Libyan supply worries, a US pipeline outage and a general rally in riskier assets on hopes of more economic stimulus measures.
Brent and US futures for December delivery traded little changed by 1025 GMT (5.25 a.m. ET) at $50.59 and $47.93 respectively. Brent ended the last session $1.75, or 3.6%, higher while US crude rose $1.76, or 3.8% on Tuesday.
US crude hit its highest since Oct 13 during Tuesday’s session after the US Colonial Pipeline suspended operations due to flooding, on outage that came on top of a strike at Brazil’s state oil producer Petrobras and the closure of the Libyan oil export terminal.
The Petrobras strike has slowed daily oil output by about 25% in the world’s ninth biggest oil producer.
“While a few days of even 500,000 barrels per day of lost supply are clearly not an issue, a sustained outage of this magnitude heading into December when refinery runs reach a seasonal high could be a reasonably bullish factor,” JBC Energy analysts said in a note.
