Oil edges up on shutdown of major crude pipeline
Oil prices rise slightly Friday morning after a shutdown of a crude oil pipeline between Canada and the US disrupts supplies. Both benchmarks were headed for a weekly loss due to concerns of abating growth in global demand, Reuters reports.
A barrel of European reference crude Brent goes for USD 76.70 Friday morning against USD 76.44 Thursday afternoon. US counterpart West Texas Intermediate trades at USD 71.96 per barrel Friday morning against USD 71.92 Thursday afternoon.
News of the accident that closed Canada TC Energy’s Keystone pipeline in the US led to a short rally Friday morning. It emerged that 14,000 barrels of crude had poured into a river in Kansas, making it one of the biggest crude oil spills in the US in almost a decade.
However, price gains are limited by a market consensus that the shutdown of the Keystone pipeline being brief.
Oil prices are still headed towards their biggest weekly drop in months. Moreover, it is expected that it will take months before the potential benefits of China’s looser Covid-19 restrictions will fuel demand. A rising infection rate will most likely lower China’s economic growth in coming months, making a potential rebound unlikely before late 2023, according to several economists.
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