West Texas Intermediate for June delivery rose as much as 56 cents to $48.28 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest since November 4 on an intraday basis.
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Brent for July settlement lost 12 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $48.81 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange on Thursday.
International Benchmark Brent crude appeared to be stroking the $50 mark on Tuesday rising 0.71 per cent to $49.32.
WTI later stood at $48.76, up 45 cents from Tuesday’s close.
Despite the disruptions oil supplies to customers are not at risk, thanks to ongoing high output in the Middle East and Russian Federation, and because of high oil inventories across the world, including the United States and Asia.
Analysts said prices resumed their uptick after the dollar eased and threats of supply disruptions came back to fore after militants in Nigeria bombed a gas pipeline owned by the Nigerian subsidiary of Italy’s Eni in the latest attack on the country’s oil facilities.
According to CNBC, a rally in oil started this week on analysts’ expectations of lower USA crude oil stockpiles sparked by many events that have been developing.
The rebound has been fueled by declining USA crude output, a wildfire that has restricted Canadian oil exports to the United States and outages in Libyan and Nigerian supply.
Prices have shot up after U.S. banking giant Goldman Sachs this week said that supply disruptions in Africa’s biggest oil producer Nigeria – along with better demand – had created a surprising short-term supply deficit.
Crude hovered around the 7-month high as investors continued to weigh disruptions in supply on Nigeria, Venezuela and Canada.
“The oil market has gone from nearing storage saturation to being in deficit much earlier than we expected”, said Goldman Sachs in a report Monday, adding that the global oil market likely shifted into a deficit in May.
“I expect prices to take a shot at $50”, said Carsten Fritsch, analyst at Commerzbank.
“They amount to more than 2.0 million barrels per day and as such are entirely soaking up the oversupply on the global oil market”.
Recent rallies were triggered by production concerns in Canada and Nigeria, as well as sentiment that balance between supply and demand had returned to the market. However, the data also showed United States inventories rose 1.3 million barrels in the week ending May 13.
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That strengthened the dollar, which tends to push oil prices lower by making the dollar-denominated commodity more expensive for holders of other currencies.
