WTI crude oil futures settle at $51.96/barrel

During this period, West Texas Intermediate crude oil rose 0.5%, as we discussed in Part 1 of this series. “The low point of the Brent market a year ago was on January 20, while WTI hit a floor February 11”.

GOLD TECHNICAL ANALYSIS – Gold prices paused to consolidate gains but maintained their foothold above 1166.51, the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement. At 5:39pm GMT, the Comex gold futures contract for February delivery was up 0.08% or $1.07 at $1,183.90 an ounce, while spot gold was 0.18% or $2.11 higher at $1,183.21 an ounce.

Members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have significantly reduced oil production in accordance with an agreement made by the cartel a year ago. Companies have added more than 100 rigs since the end of September. Under the terms of the 2017 budget, the KRG are allocated 250 MBOPD of exports from fields under their control, which does not included the disputed Kirkuk fields, which Kurdish forces control, but are run by Iraq’s North Oil Company (NOC), reports Reuters.

Shale producers in the United States added rigs for a tenth week in a row last week, which extended the drilling recovery into the eighth month.

Analysts at Barclays said they expected the USA rig count to rise to 850-875 by the end of the year.

“The oil rally may be running out of steam with bulls desperately searching for opportunities to keep prices buoyed”.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Tuesday that American crude production in 2017 would rise by 110,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 9 million bpd.

Luaibi had confirmed last week that Iraq has begun implementing measures to reduce national oil output in keeping with an OPEC decision. At the same time, the cartel expects Russian Federation and some other big oil producers to cut their oil production as well.

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“The recent rebound is quite strong, maybe it can go a little bit further, but we think it won’t be that much”.

Malaysia’s state-owned oil major Petroliam Nasional Bhd has made a voluntary adjustment to its crude oil production by up to 20,000 barrels per day. When this happens the market will move from over-supply to a more balanced supply/demand situation according to S&P Global Platts Analytics.

She said the market expects the Energy Department to conduct a number of sales over the next few years following a “test” release from the SPR back in 2014 (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-sale-from-spr-raises-questions-of-timing-politics-2014-03-14), which was made to help it assess the need for any updates to the infrastructure of the reserve, which now holds 695.1 million barrels of crude oil.