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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gary Burton who wrote (53440)	10/23/1999 7:39:00 AM
From: oilbabe	Respond to of 95453

Crude Oil Rises After Phillips Closes 300,000 Barrel/Day Norway Field New York, Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil rose almost 4 percent to a two-week high after Phillips Petroleum Co. shut down Norway's second-largest oil field because of a gas leak on an offshore platform in the North Sea. The Ekofisk field, which produces about 300,000 barrels of oil a day, will be closed for a week, Phillips said. The field accounts for about 10 percent of oil output from Norway, the world's second-largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia. ``That's a good bit of production off the stream,' said Michael Fitzpatrick, a trader at Fimat USA Inc. in New York. ``It can't be anything but positive for prices.' Crude oil for December delivery rose 84 cents, or 3.7 percent, to $23.45 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest closing price since Oct. 5 and biggest one-day gain since Oct. 12. Prices are up 95 percent this year. Crude could reach $25 a barrel next week, prompted by buying by commodity funds, said Tim Evans, an analyst at Pegasus Econometric Group in New York. The shutdown of the Norwegian field comes at a time when U.S. crude oil inventories, at 300.7 million barrels, are close to a two-year low. Norway -- which pumps about 3 million barrels of oil a day, or 4 percent of world supply -- already had cut daily output by 200,0000 barrels as part of an agreement among world producers to pump less. The resulting 7 percent reduction in world supply helped double oil prices from a 12-year low in December. Norway's cutback is scheduled to expire on Dec. 31, and the country is considering raising its production capacity by 500,000 barrels a day next year. For most other producers, the cuts are due to continue until March. 31. In London, December Brent crude oil rose 82 cents, or 3.7 percent, to $22.93 a barrel on the International Petroleum Exchange. Extension? Prices also were boosted on further signs that production cuts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will be maintained after the end of March. ``If need be, they'll be extended' to keep prices high, Venezuelan Deputy Energy and Mines Minister Alvaro Silva Calderon said at a news conference today, echoing similar predictions in recent weeks from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. ``There's a little bit of a bandwagon now to extend those production cuts past March,' Evans said. ``Norway is the nearby lever pushing this market up, but there is an idea that the coalition could stick together a little longer than we'd thought.' Saudi Arabia is the world's biggest oil producer. Venezuela and Kuwait are the fourth- and seventh-largest within OPEC, respectively. Gasoline for November delivery rose 1.6 cents, or 2.5 percent, to 65.58 cents a gallon on the Nymex. November heating oil rose 1.9 cents, or 3.2 percent, to 60.89 cents a gallon.