Oil futures moved higher Monday, finding support on concerns about output in the Gulf of Mexico in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.
West Texas Intermediate crude for October delivery
CL00,
CLV21,
rose 60 cents, or 0.9%, to $70.32 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. November Brent crude
BRN00,
BRNX21,
the global benchmark, was up 52 cents, or 0.7%, at $73.44 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.
“WTI is starting the week on the front foot, climbing above the $70 level for the first time in over a week. These gains in the price of oil happen as concerns grow over U.S. production, following the damage caused by Hurricane Ida to infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico, which has seen output drop by about 1.4 million barrels a day since late August,” said Ricardo Evangelista, senior analyst at ActivTrades, in a note.
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Gulf of Mexico output has been slow to come back after Ida made landfall on the Louisiana Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. The Bureau of Safety and Economic Enforcement on Sunday evening said 48.6% of Gulf of Mexico oil output, equal to 883,000 barrels a day of production, remained shut in. The BSEE estimated 51.4% of natural-gas output in the Gulf was also shut in.
“Meanwhile, the consensus, despite the uncertainty caused by the growing number of coronavirus cases, is that oil demand will continue to increase in the run-up to the end of the year, in a dynamic that could support further increases in price,” Evangelista said.
This post was originally published on Market Watch
