RIYADH: Oil prices gained more than 2 percent on Friday as supply outages in Libya and expected shutdowns in Norway outweighed expectations that an economic slowdown could dent demand.
Brent crude futures settled at $111.63 a barrel, rising $2.60, or 2.4 percent. West Texas Intermediate crude settled at $108.43 a barrel, gaining $2.67, or 2.5 percent.
WTI and Brent traded at about 70 percent and 77 percent, respectively, of the previous session’s volumes ahead of the US Fourth of July holiday.
For the week, Brent lost 1.3 percent, while WTI rose 0.8 percent. For June, both benchmarks had ended the month lower for the first time since November.
Petroecuador lost 1.99 million barrels of oil output
More than two weeks of protests in Ecuador caused state-run oil company Petroecuador to lose 1.99 million barrels of oil production, the company said on Friday, adding that it expects to reach 90 percent of pre-crisis output in the next week.
Protests erupted in Ecuador in June to demand lower fuel prices and limits to the expansion of the mining and oil industries, leading to at least eight deaths and devastating oil production. A pact to end the crisis was signed on Thursday between the government of President Guillermo Lasso and indigenous leaders.
The incident cost the company some $512.9 million, more than half of which came from lost production, while missed exports of Oriente crude — which were declared under force majeure earlier this week — cost it some $110 million.
“We found facilities destroyed, vandalized,” said Petroecuador’s manager, Italo Cedeño, at a news conference.
The company said it recovered 19,000 barrels per day of output since the protests ended on Thursday, while its Esmeraldas refinery was working at 70 percent capacity on Friday.
Nigeria lost $1 billion in Q1 revenue due to crude oil theft
Nigeria lost $1 billion in revenue during the first quarter of this year due to crude oil theft, the petroleum regulator said on Friday, warning the practice was a threat to the economy of Africa’s top producer.
Gbenga Komolafe, the head of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, said of the 141 million barrels of oil produced in the first quarter of 2022, only about 132 million barrels of oil were received at export terminals.
“This indicates that over nine million barrels of oil were lost to crude oil theft. This amounts to a loss in government revenue of about $1 billion in just one quarter,” Komolafe said in a statement.
“This trend poses an existential threat to the oil and gas sector and by extension, the Nigerian economy if not curbed,” he added.
Crude oil theft has increased to a daily average of 108,000 barrels in the first quarter of 2022 from 103,000 barrels in 2021, Komolafe said.
(With inputs from Reuters)
