The price of OPEC basket of thirteen crudes stood at $44.82 a barrel on Tuesday, compared with $44.37 the previous day, according to OPEC Secretariat calculations.
The new OPEC Reference Basket of Crudes (ORB) is made up of the following: Saharan Blend (Algeria), Girassol (Angola), Oriente (Ecuador), Minas (Indonesia), Iran Heavy (Islamic Republic of Iran), Basra Light (Iraq), Kuwait Export (Kuwait), Es Sider (Libya), Bonny Light (Nigeria), Qatar Marine (Qatar), Arab Light (Saudi Arabia), Murban (UAE) and Merey (Venezuela).
Meanwhile, CNBC reports that the world’s oil market is rebalancing faster than expected due to several serious outages, but for now there is enough oil in storage and excess capacity to keep prices from spiking.
“We’ve strung together an impressive number of outages and supply disruptions for the moment, but there’s every incentive in the dire straits the industry’s been in to get these barrels on line,” said John Kilduff, partner with Again Capital.
Outages and supply disruptions in Canada, Nigeria, Venezuela, and other producing regions have reduced oil production by an estimated 3.8 million barrels a day. Some of those outages should be temporary, and could bring a wall of oil back to the market once they are resolved. There is also the potential for more production from Saudi Arabia, Iran and even the U.S. – if prices rise enough to enable America’s shale producers to restart some drilling.
“Some of it’s temporary, and if it goes on long enough, there will be longer lasting implications,” said Michael Cohen, head of energy commodities research at Barclays. In Canada, an estimated 1.2 million barrels a day are offline due to forest fires in Alberta. The uncontrolled fire, covering 704,000 acres, moved toward energy production facilities Tuesday, after jumping a fire break area, according to Reuters.
Suncor shut down its base plant, and said it had not sustained any damage, while Enbridge’s Cheecham crude tank farm was less than a mile away from fire but fire fighters had the fire under control, according to Reuters.
