Oil prices climb amid Libya outages

By: XINHUA 1 min read
Oil prices climb amid Libya outages
OPEC confounded its doubters and sent crude oil prices soaring by agreeing to its first production cuts in eight years that has seen an immediate impact in prices that gained as much as 10 percent in some parts of the world/FILE

NEW YORK, April 18 (Xinhua) — Oil prices rose on Monday as reports of outages in Libya intensified concerns over supply risks.

The West Texas Intermediate for May delivery added 1.26 U.S. dollars, or 1.2 percent, to settle at 108.21 U.S. dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude for June delivery increased 1.46 dollars, or 1.3 percent, to close at 113.16 dollars a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange.

Libya’s National Oil Corporation on Monday declared force majeure on the Al-Sharara oilfield, a key oilfield in the country, citing pressure on workers.

Earlier in the day, the company declared a state of force majeure on the oil port of Zueitina and warned of “a painful wave of closures,” after saying on Sunday it had halted production at another field, El Feel.

Libya outages coupled with the ongoing Ukraine crisis deepened fears about tight supplies, experts noted.

XINHUA

XINHUA

Xinhua News Agency, founded on November 7, 1931, is China’s national news agency as well as a global news and information network. Xinhua has set up a global news and information gathering network, with headquarters in Beijing, 33 domestic bureaus in provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities plus the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao, as well as 140 bureaus in the rest of the world. Xinhua is yet to set up a bureau in Taiwan, where it has posted resident correspondents. Xinhua provides its worldwide subscribers with news and financial information products in the forms of text, photo, graphics, audio, video, and mobile phone text messages 24 hours a day in eight languages: Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese and Japanese.