By Christian Berthelsen, Neena Rai and Benoît Faucon
Crude-oil prices fell Thursday after worries about production in
Saudi Arabia and Libya eased.
Light, sweet crude for December delivery was down 76 cents, or
1%, at $77.92 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent
crude was down 61 cents, or 0.7%, at $82.35 a barrel on the ICE
Futures Europe exchange.
Markets jumped Wednesday and arrested their monthslong slide
after a fire was reported at a pipeline in Saudi Arabia and rebels
attacked Libya's main oil field. But they turned lower early
Thursday on reports that damage to the Saudi Aramco diesel pipeline
was limited and that the Libyan rebel attack was over.
In addition, the loss of Libyan production was small relative to
1 million-barrel surplus in international markets at the
moment.
"Following the renewed occupation by armed militants of the El
Sharara oil field in the south west of Libya, the market has been
'stripped' of 200,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Libya,"
said Commerzbank in a note to clients.
On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries could lower
production if oil prices fall to $70 a barrel. The WSJ report cited
OPEC officials.
The market was also supported by data showing weekly U.S. oil
stockpiles didn't increase as much as expected.
"U.S. prices (WTI) did a lot better than European prices (Brent)
after some helpful U.S. data," said Tobin Gorey, commodities
analyst at Commonwealth Bank of Australia. "A bounce after setting
new lows is not all that surprising, but the main issue remains
just how far OPEC is willing to push on with price
competition."
Gasoline for December delivery was flat at $2.9872 a gallon.
December diesel was down 0.68 cent at $2.4319 a gallon.
Write to Christian Berthelsen at christian.berthelsen@wsj.com,
Neena Rai at neena.rai@wsj.com and Benoît Faucon at
benoit.faucon@wsj.com
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