Oil Prices Edge Lower Despite Reports of Supply Disruptions

Oil Prices Edge Lower Despite Reports of Supply Disruptions

Aug 28, 2018

Oil prices edged lower on Tuesday despite the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned of further supply disruptions.

Brent Oil Futures for November delivery went down 0.03% to $76.48 at 12:42AM ET (04:42 GMT), while Crude Oil WTI Futures for October delivery also slipped 0.04% to $68.84.

On Monday, The IEA warned an economic crisis in Venezuela has cut deep into the OPEC-member's oil output. Venezuelan crude oil exports have halved in the previous two years to just 1 million bpd by mid-2018, according to trade flow data.

"We can expect a further fall," the IEA's Executive Director Fatih Birol told Reuters in Norway on Monday.

Birol also warned that African OPEC-members Libya and Nigeria "seem both still fragile countries" despite some recent improvements.

However, Birol said it was too early to assess any potential impact of the U.S. sanctions that will target Iran from November.

“The weaker U.S.-dollar helped commodities in general," said Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at futures brokerage AxiTrader.

Traders also await further developments in the China-U.S. trade relations.

The two-day trade talks between China and the U.S. ended last week with no major breakthroughs.

"We concluded two days of discussions with counterparts from China and exchanged views on how to achieve fairness, balance, and reciprocity in the economic relationship," White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in a brief statement. 

Meanwhile, a new round of U.S. tariffs on $16 billion worth of imports from China kicked in last week, followed immediately by reciprocal tariffs from China.

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