West Texas Intermediate crude fell for a seventh day on Monday, its longest stretch of losses since December 2009. Brent touched a three-week low as Libya prepared to increase exports from two ports closed for a year.
Libya has 7.5 million barrels of oil ready to export from the Es Sider and Ras Lanuf terminals after ending force majeure, the country’s oil ministry said. The Islamist insurgency in Iraq, OPEC’s second-largest producer, hasn’t spread to the south, the source of most of the country’s output. Futures also dropped after US equities fell from a record.
“The Libya situation has added to the downward pressure on the market,” said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York-based hedge fund that focuses on energy. “We’ve given back all of the Iraq security-fear gains that were added in June.”
WTI for August delivery fell 76 cents, or 0.7 percent, to $103.30 a barrel at 11:14am on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices touched $103.25, the lowest level since June 9. The seven-day drop is the longest slide since a nine-day decline ended December 14, 2009. The volume of all futures traded was 34 percent below the 100-day average for the time of day.
There was no floor trading in New York during the fourth of July holiday, and electronic transactions will be booked Monday for settlement purposes.
Brent for August settlement fell 48 cents to $110.16 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The contract touched $110.09, the lowest intraday price since June 12. The European benchmark traded at a $7.05 premium to WTI, compared with $6.94 on July 3.
Brent declined 2.4 percent last week, erasing this year’s gains, as rebels seeking self-rule in Libya’s east agreed to surrender the Es Sider and Ras Lanuf ports, the nation’s biggest and third-largest oil-export terminals. The government in Tripoli has instructed National Oil Corp. to start marketing supplies from the two facilities, Mohamed Elharari, a spokesman for the state-run company, said.
Es Sider holds 4.5 million barrels in storage and Ras Lanuf contains 3 million, Oil Ministry Measurement Director Ibrahim Al-Awami said.
The ports can export a combined 560,000 barrels a day, the oil ministry said.
Libya pumped 300,000 barrels a day last month, down from 1.13 million in June 2013, making it the smallest producer in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
