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INVESTORS SEE HIGHER PRICES

Investors see further rises in oilprices.

Oil holds above $40 as producers back market

SINGAPORE, March 8, 2016

Brent crude oil prices dipped early on Tuesday, but remained over $40 a barrel after jumping to a 2016-high the previous session as more producers announced talks to support the market and investors opened new bets on further price rises.

International benchmark Brent crude futures LOCc1 managed to defend $40 per barrel in early trading on Tuesday, standing at $40.51 at 0154 GMT, down 33 cents from their last settlement. On Monday, the contract had surged over 5.5 per cent in intra-day trading and remains 50 per cent above 2016 lows from Jan. 20.

US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $37.65 a barrel, down 25 cents from their last close, but over 45 per cent up from their 2016 low in February.

Oil markets first gained traction last Friday after Russia's energy minister said that a meeting between the Opec group and other leading oil producers about freezing output could take place between March 20 and April 1.

Late on Monday, South American producers also said they would meet to talk about action to support prices.

Gary Ross, founder and executive chairman at New York-based consultancy PIRA, told Reuters that oil would recover to $50 a barrel by the end of the year, potentially aided by eventual supply cuts from leading producers in Opec.

"They want $50 oil, this is going to become the new anchor for global oil prices," said Ross, one of the industry's most respected analysts but whose forecasts are rarely made public.

ANZ bank said that oil traders had started to cut back short positions that would profit from lower prices.

"Speculators reduced short positions in WTI crude by 15 per cent in the week ended 1 March," the bank said.

Until late February, traders held near record amounts of short positions that were betting on further price falls, but sentiment has since flipped, indicating that the market increasingly thinks that prices have bottomed out.

The combined net long position in West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent futures and options was boosted by more than 61 million barrels last week to the highest level in nine months.

Investors haven't only turned bullish on oil. Iron ore prices, a key ingredient for making steel, shot up almost 20 per cent on Monday in what some called its biggest ever single-day price rally on hopes that demand from China would pick up, at least in the short-term. – Reuters




Tags: oil price | Commodities | Brent Crude | Opec talks |

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