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Hedge funds slash bullish oil bets to November lows on supply worries

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hedge funds and other big speculators cut their bullish wagers on U.S. crude for a second straight week, to the lowest since November, as worries about oil oversupplies grew, data showed on Friday. Global crude prices, including that of the U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI), have struggled to find a bottom over the past six weeks as initial fears that a 60 percent price drop since June was excessive were later offset by burgeoning oil production. Prices of WTI, and Brent, the London-traded global benchmark for crude, fell 9 percent this week as a rallying dollar brought further pressure on dollar-denominated commodities, making them more expensive to holders of the euro and other currencies. Separately, data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission showed the net long position in WTI held by money managers, including hedge funds and speculators, dropping by 5,613 contracts to 181,474 in […]

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Oil Price Hasn’t Hit Bottom as Surplus Expands, Greenspan Says

(Bloomberg) — The price of crude oil hasn’t reached a bottom yet as production keeps increasing, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said. The slump in oil prices hasn’t curtailed output, and there is a huge amount bottled up in the U.S., Greenspan said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Friday. Inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for U.S. benchmark futures, will keep rising, he said. “We are probably at the point now, where at the current rate of fill, we are going to run out of room in Cushing by next month,” he said. “Until we find a way to get out of this dilemma, prices will continue to ease because there’s no place for that oil to go except into the markets.” West Texas Intermediate futures dropped 1.9 percent to $46.17 a barrel as of 9:31 a.m. Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices […]

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Natural Gas Falls on Oversupply Concerns

By Timothy Puko Natural-gas prices inched lower Friday with oversupply concerns outweighing weather updates that showed a chance of lingering demand for heating. The front-month April contract settled down 0.7 cent, or 0.3%, at $2.727 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. A late rally failed to give the market a gain for the day, and gas finished with a 3.9% loss for the week. WeatherBELL Analytics LLC in New York had a noon weather update predicting "a major cold shot" for the Plains starting in a week. Prices rallied from a late-morning low spot of $2.685/mmBtu. The fact it didn’t rally more shows how bearish the market is, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy-advisory firm Ritterbusch & Associates. "Our market stance remains unequivocally bearish as we still see strong likelihood of a price drop to the $2.50 area," he said in a note. It […]

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World Oil Demand

mb/dWorld Oil Demand1Q20122Q20123Q20124Q20121Q20132Q20133Q20134Q20131Q20142Q20143Q20144Q20141Q20152Q20153Q20154Q2015868890929496© 2015 OECD/IEA World Oil Demand *Please note that these Highlights are from the latest Oil Market Report, which is released in full to subscribers only – according to this schedule each month . Non subscribers get free access to the latest Highlights on this schedule, however the full Oil Market Report is released to the public two weeks after the report is released to subscribers. If you would like to receive the full report with accompanying charts and graphs on the day of publication please subscribe or contact the subscription manager . Crude oil prices stabilised following early-February gains , with ICE Brent rising more than NYMEX WTI which was weighed down by swelling US stockpiles. At the time of writing, Brent was trading at around $58/bbl – up nearly 30% from a six-year low in January. WTI was at around $48/bbl. Having bottomed-out in 2Q14, […]

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IEA: Strong U.S. Production Could Set Stage for Oil Price Fall

ENLARGE Manifolds that regulate the input and output of oil to the White Cliffs pipeline at the SemCrude tank farm north of Cushing, Okla, pictured in 2012. The U.S. has been producing and importing more oil than it is consuming and that extra crude is flowing into storage tanks, especially at the country’s main trading hub in Cushing. Photo: Associated Press The oil market’s recent rebound may not last, an influential energy watchdog warned on Friday, as the U.S.’s ability to keep pumping more crude has defied expectations and could set the stage for prices to fall again. In its closely watched monthly report, the International Energy Agency said U.S. oil production was up 115,000 barrels a day in February, some of it going into bulging storage inventories whose capacity may soon be tested. “That would inevitably lead to renewed price weakness,” the report said. Financial markets have been […]

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IEA sees renewed pressure on oil prices as glut worsens

LONDON (Reuters) – Oil prices might have stabilized only temporarily because the global oil glut is worsening and U.S. production shows no sign of slowing, the International Energy Agency said on Friday. The West’s energy watchdog said the United States may soon run out of spare capacity to store crude, which would put additional downward pressure on prices. That process would last at least until the second half of 2015, when growth in U.S. oil production is expected to start abating. Combined with an increase in global demand, the expected U.S. production slowdown would give some support to oil prices and respite to oil producers’ group OPEC, the IEA said. "On the face of it, the oil price appears to be stabilizing. What a precarious balance it is, however," the Paris-based IEA said in its monthly report. "Behind the façade of stability, the rebalancing triggered by the price collapse […]

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For Now, Sectarian Calm in Liberated Iraq Town

ENLARGE A Shiite soldier fighting against Islamic State militants tried to plant a flag near Tikrit this week. Photo: Reuters BAGHDAD—Ezaz Al Jobouri returned this week to his Sunni hometown near the battleground of Tikrit to find a house with neither electricity nor water, and a swarm of Shiite militiamen, long violent adversaries of his sect, patrolling the streets. After two months away, Mr. Jobouri didn’t mind. “I don’t care who liberated my town as long as it is safe and the families are back home,” Mr. Jobouri said Friday, speaking by phone from the farming community of Al Alam northeast of Tikrit. “We can live with the current situation as long as there is no Daesh anymore,” he added, using the Arabic acronym of Islamic State, the Sunni militant group that controlled the town until this week. Shiite militiamen and Iraqi government forces freed the town in some […]

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Obama’s Newly Harsh Tone on Keystone Seen Signaling Rejection

U.S. President Barack Obama. Photographer: Kristoffer Tripplaar/Pool via Bloomberg (Bloomberg) — Facing re-election and $4 a gallon gasoline, President Barack Obama sounded like an enthusiastic supporter of the Keystone XL pipeline at a March 2012 campaign rally. “I’m directing my administration to cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucratic hurdles, and make this project a priority,” he said in a speech in Cushing, Oklahoma, referring to a southern leg of the long-delayed project. Those days are gone. Now when Obama describes the next proposed Keystone segment he says it will only create about 300 jobs. He calls the Calgary-based pipeline builder TransCanada Corp. a “foreign company” and says the oil won’t benefit American motorists. And last week, he even said the process of extracting crude from the Alberta oil sands is “extraordinarily dirty.” After years of review, Obama may be finally nearing a decision on the $8 […]

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Kerry says unclear whether deal with Iran can be reached by end March

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Saturday on the eve of fresh talks with Iran over its nuclear-power program that it was unclear whether an interim could be deal reached by the end of the month. "I can’t tell you whether or not we can get a deal," Kerry told a news conference. The United States and five other major powers will resume negotiations with Iran in Lausanne, Switzerland on Sunday ahead of a deadline at the end of March for a framework deal, with a final agreement in June. On next week’s Israeli election, Kerry said the United States hoped that whatever the outcome it would help push the peace process with Palestinians forward. Opinion polls show Israel’s center-left opposition is poised for an upset victory in the parliamentary elections over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party. The United States "remains hopeful […]

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