Oil futures rose Thursday, building on a strong start to 2022, as traders worried about unrest in Kazakhstan and production outages in Libya.
West Texas Intermediate crude for February delivery
CL00,
+1.98%
CLG22,
+1.98%
rose 90 cents, or 1.2%, to $78.75 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. March Brent crude
BRN00,
+1.72%
BRNH22,
+1.72%,
the global benchmark, was up 81 cents, or 1%, at $81.61 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. WTI and Brent futures both closed at six-week highs on Wednesday and are up more than 5% in the first four trading days of the year.
Dozens of people were killed in Kazakhstan on Thursday as authorities responded to countrywide protests over soaring fuel prices. A Russian-led military alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, said early Thursday that it would send peacekeeper troops to Kazakhstan at the request of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
The situation in Kazakhstan “is becoming increasingly tense. And this is a country that is currently producing 1.6 million barrels of oil per day,” said Barbara Lambrecht, commodity analyst at Commerzbank, in a note.
Libya on Monday said it expected output to fall by another 200,000 barrels a day this week as workers attempt to fix a damaged pipeline, news reports said. Combined with oil field outages, Libyan output is seen down by more than 500,000 barrels a day.
