Oil Prices Soar To 10-Month High

Crude oil is trading at levels not seen since last November, with Brent crude prices reaching $92 per barrel on Tuesday.

Brent crude was trading at $92.30 (+1.83%) on Tuesday at 01:25 pm ET. The last time oil traded that high was in late November 2022. WTI crude—the U.S. benchmark—was trading at $89.26 at that time, trading up 2.26% on the day.

The price increases come as OPEC+ heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Russia extended their voluntary production cuts in an effort to balance the markets—and to make good on Mohammed bin Salman’s threat to punish short sellers and oil speculators who dare to bet against crude oil.

But despite Saudi Arabia’s pledge to stretch out its production cut quotas through the end of 2023, OPEC’s production actually rose in the month of August, according to the group’s Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) released on Tuesday. For August, the group’s production rose modestly, by 113,000 bpd, as members not beholden to the cut quotas, such as Iran and Nigeria, lifted production. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, Angola, Algeria, and Venezuela were among the countries that saw production declines for August compared to July levels.

OPEC’s outlook for global oil demand for this year was unchanged in its MOMR, at 2.44 million bpd.

Also propping up prices is a storm in Libya that shuttered four oil export terminals over the weekend, further tightening global oil supplies in what some say is an already tight market.

In the United States, the API is set to release crude oil and oil product inventory figures that could further push prices up should there be another inventory fall. Analysts are projecting that crude oil inventories sank by another 2 million barrels last week.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

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