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Oil futures edged lower Tuesday, pulling back from a nearly one-month high, as traders weighed news that Libya has restarted production at its largest oil field and ongoing tensions in the Middle East.
Price moves
-
West Texas Intermediate crude for March delivery
CL00,
-0.09% CLH24,
-0.09%
fell 27 cents, or 0.4%, to $74.49 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. -
March Brent crude
BRN00,
-0.21% BRNH24,
-0.21% ,
the global benchmark, was off 49 cents, or 0.6%, at $79.57 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. -
February gasoline
RBG24,
-0.95%
lost 0.9% to $2.217 a gallon, while February heating oil
HOG24,
-0.19%
shed 0.5% to $2.68 a gallon. -
Natural gas for February delivery
NGG24,
-1.86%
traded at $2.361 per million British thermal units, down 2.4%.
Market drivers
Oil prices headed lower Tuesday, giving up part of Monday’s advance, with the pullback coming “in conjunction with no new developments in the Red Sea and the opening of Libya’s largest oil field, said Rania Gule, market analyst at XS.com.
Both Brent and WTI ended Monday at their highest since Dec. 26, lifted by concerns not just around the threat to supply from continued tensions in the Middle East. Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian Baltic ports, from which Russia exports oil, have also been a concern, said Carsten Fritsch, commodity analyst at Commerzbank, in a note.
See: U.S., British launch new round of airstrikes against multiple Houthi sites in Yemen
Oil production in North Dakota has also been curtailed by freezing weather that may take weeks to fully undo, he noted, with production losses last week running as high as 700,000 barrels a day.
Meanwhile, news reports said Libya’s National Oil Co. has lifted force majeure on the Sharara oil field, the nation’s largest, after a two-week shutdown due to protests. The field produces up to 300,000 barrels a day.
In the U.S., the Energy Information Administration will release weekly data on petroleum supplies on Wednesday.
On average, analysts polled by S&P Global Commodity Insights expect the data to show a decline in domestic commercial crude supplies of 3 million barrels to 427 million barrels, which would be the lowest in nearly three months. They also forecast a weekly inventory gain of 1 million barrels for gasoline, and a modest 81,000-barrel fall for distillate stockpiles.
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