Oil Jumps Above $30 for First Time in Two Months

EghtesadOnline: Oil rose above $30 a barrel on Monday for the first time in two months as producers in the US and elsewhere continued to cut output.

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19 May 2020

Futures in New York climbed about 5.6%, rallying ahead of an expiration period that a month earlier saw prices turn negative for the first time, Bloomberg reported.

The number of drilling rigs in the US fell for a ninth week to levels not seen in more than a decade, while stockpiles at a key storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, shrank for the first time since late February. Saudi Aramco didn’t give extra volumes of oil to three Asian customers who asked for it, according to refiners.

OPEC+ kicked off cuts to remove 10% of global production at the beginning of the month. Together with a tentative recovery in demand and collapsing US output, that’s made a repeat of last month’s plunge below zero extremely unlikely before the expiration of the West Texas Intermediate June contract on Tuesday.

Mohammad Barkindo, secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, said in a Bloomberg Television interview that the outlook for the oil market in the second half of 2020 was more positive as the global economy recovers.

OPEC+ oil shipments have seen a “stunning reversal” in May, according to market intelligence company Kpler. Exports have fallen by 6.4 million barrels a day so far this month, it said.