Wednesday July 15, 10:56 am Eastern Time
FOCUS-Oil price rises on U.S stocks, oil cuts evid
LONDON, July 15 (Reuters) - World oil prices were lifted on Wednesday by news of a reduction in crude oil inventories in the United States and further evidence that major oil producers were cutting supplies.
Bellwether Brent blend futures traded in London up 17 cents at $13.19 a barrel by 1221 GMT.
Traders said a surprise draw in U.S. crude stocks gave oil prices some extra support in a market already given a lift by evidence of August cuts from Middle East OPEC producers.
Qatar told its Asian buyers that it would cut August term liftings by nine percent from three percent in July.
On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia informed European and Asian buyers that August term liftings would be slashed by an average eight to nine percent, deeper than reductions in July.
Abu Dhabi said last week August term crude liftings would be reduced by five percent.
But Iran, OPEC's second largest producer has deferred Asian July crude sales to August. Asian traders said this would allow Iran to avoid the cuts other Middle East producers have made to meet OPEC obligations.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed in June to extend output cuts to 2.6 million barrels a day, cutting by nearly 10 percent output which earlier this year had helped force prices to 10-year lows.
Dealers said a timely draw of crude stocks shown in weekly American Petroleum Institute (API) data released late on Tuesday was also supportive of prices but they noted that they still remained $6 lower than on average last year.
The API said U.S. crude stocks were down 6.3 million barrels in the week to July 10 to 335 million barrels.
But some dealers cautioned against expectations of a strong price rebound.
Crude stocks remained nearly 17.5 million barrels above this time last year, despite last week's fall, dealers said.
Further, the data showed that U.S. crude imports rose by two million bpd to 9.323 million bpd.
''It all depends on gasoline, if gasoline demand continues to rise and stocks are down, the current price recovery may be definite,'' said one European oil trader.
Meanwhile market scepticism lingered over producers' adherence to pledges of oil cuts.
''It is going to take some time to make serious inroads into the stock excess,'' said Leslie Nicholas at GNI London.
''Overall global crude supple has peaked but more evidence of production cuts is needed -- which we hope to see in the second half of July -- before prices develop a solid raft of support,'' he added.
Prices in dollars per barrel:
July 15 July 14
(1221 GMT) (close)
IPE August Brent 13.19 13.02
NYMEX August light crude 14.77 14.55
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