Oil rises in Asia on OPEC inaction, Norway strikes
SINGAPORE, June 12 (Reuters) - Oil prices gained in Asia on Monday as producing cartel the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) delayed a plan to put more supplies in the rallying market.
New worker strikes, which have cut Norway's oil supplies from the weekend, also bolstered market sentiment.
By 0715 GMT, the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) crude market for July futures was last traded at $30.40 a barrel, up 20 cents from Friday.
The same market had settled 42 cents up in New York on Friday at $30.20 a barrel.
OPEC's latest non-interventionist stance has returned oil to near two month highs above $30, a level discomforting to both producers and consumers.
The return to strength comes after a softer tone early last week, as dealers tried to interpret whether OPEC would raise supply under its much publicised plan.
The plan, drawn up by an informal agreement early in March, allows OPEC to automatically raise output by 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) to cool prices, if on a 20-day average its basket of crudes breaks above $28 a barrel.
This average stood at $28.13 a barrel on June 8, according to Reuters' last calculations based on figures from the OPEC secretariat.
But on Sunday, OPEC Secretary-General Rilwanu Lukman said the cartel would not implement any output hike before the major producers' June 21 meeting in Vienna.
"It was always an informal plan," Lukman said in Canada, where he is attending a world oil industry summit.
"We are very close to the meeting and I don't see OPEC triggering anything unusual before June 21," he said.
OPEC President Ali Rodriguez made similar comments on Friday, saying that recent high oil prices gave a false impression that world oil supplies were tight.
OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia told Asian term customers on Monday to expect cutbacks of 9 to 11 percent in July on its standard oil contracts, against lower cuts of six to eight percent in June.
NORWAY WORKER STRIKES
On the backburner was a labour dispute which prompted a cut in Norway's oil supplies from the weekend.
On Saturday, some 185 Norwegian oil union workers went on a strike after pay talks with employers collapsed.
This has resulted in the closure of a 225,000 bpd Draugen oil platform operated by oil major Shell <RD.AS> <SHEL.L>, and delayed work on two gas platforms.
Norway, with 3.2 million bpd exports, is a major oil exporter behind Saudi Arabia.
Norway last month scraped through its most serious labour dispute since the 1980s, which had crippled oil exports by nearly a third for around a week.
03:46 06-12-00 |
