RIYADH: Oil prices rose for a second straight session on Tuesday, driven by optimism about recovering demand in China, and concerns over supply shortages following the shutdown of a major export terminal after an earthquake in Turkiye.
Brent crude futures rose 80 cents, or 0.99 percent, to $81.79 per barrel at 08.25 a.m. Saudi time, while West Texas Intermediate futures rose 78 cents, or 1.05 percent, to $74.89 per barrel.
Colombia’s oil output in December rises 5.24 percent
Colombia’s crude oil production in December rose 5.24 percent versus the same month a year earlier, the government said on Monday.
Oil output was up to an average of 784,343 barrels per day in December 2022, compared with production of 745,325 bpd in the same month in 2021, the Ministry of Mines and Energy said in a statement.
Colombia’s oil production in December was the highest since April 2020, when the country produced an average of 796,164 bpd, the government said.
Average oil production for the year rose 2.42 percent to 754,199 bpd, the ministry said, up from an average of 736,357 bpd in 2021.
Natural gas output in December was 1.06 billion cubic feet per day, the ministry said, without providing a comparative figure.
Gas production for the year averaged 1.07 billion cubic feet per day, down 1.29 percent versus 2021, when gas production hit almost 1.09 bcfd, the government said.
State-run Ecopetrol produces the majority of the country’s oil.
Turkiye’s Ceyhan oil terminal, Iraq’s KRG pipeline halted after quake
A massive earthquake that struck Turkiye and Syria on Monday halted operations at Turkiye’s major oil export hub in Ceyhan and stopped key crude oil flows from Iraq and Azerbaijan, officials said.
The Tribeca shipping agency said in a notice that the BTC terminal at Ceyhan that exports Azeri crude oil will be closed through Wednesday pending damage assessments. Azerbaijan uses the Turkish port of Ceyhan as its main crude export hub, with a flow of about 650,000 bpd.
BP Azerbaijan said a “small” oil leak had been found at Ceyhan, which led to operations being halted, and had been stopped.
After Monday’s earthquake, Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government halted flows through the pipeline it operates that runs from Iraq’s northern Kirkuk fields to Ceyhan, the region’s ministry of natural resources said.
The KRG had been pumping 400,000 bpd and Iraq’s federal government was pumping 75,000 bpd through the pipeline, an oil industry source told Reuters.
Oil exports will resume after a “careful inspection of the pipelines is finalized,” the MNR said in a statement.
Most upstream oil producers have several days of storage capacity, so KRG production should continue in the near term, the oil industry source added.
The eastern Mediterranean terminal of Ceyhan is some 155 km from the area of the magnitude 7.8 quake which struck southern Turkiye and northwest Syria early on Monday, killing more than 2,400 people across a swathe of the two countries as buildings collapsed.
It was the worst tremor to strike Turkiye this century and was followed in the early afternoon by another large quake of magnitude 7.7.
Turkiye’s state pipeline operator BOTAS said natural gas flows were halted to Gaziantep, Hatay and Kahramanmaras provinces and some other districts as a result of damage to a gas transmission line.
BP reiterates equal spending on hydrocarbons, energy transition by 2030
BP reiterated on Tuesday plans to equally divide its spending by 2030 between its oil and gas and energy transition businesses, increasing the total budget to up to $18 billion from a previously guided upper range of $16 billion.
It also said it would produce more oil and gas for longer than previously guided, foreseeing a reduction in its hydrocarbon output of around 25 percent by 2030 compared with 2019, down from a previous forecast of a 40 percent reduction.
“We need continuing near-term investment into today’s energy system — which depends on oil and gas — to meet today’s demands and to make sure the transition is an orderly one,” CEO Bernard Looney said.
BP’s transition businesses include bioenergy, convenience retail shops, electric vehicle charging, renewables and hydrogen, taking up around 30 percent of the budget currently compared with 3 percent in 2019, a spokesperson said.
(With input from Reuters)
