Doha: Oil prices settled lower on Friday, as the market weighed supply concerns from the unrest in Kazakhstan and outages in Libya against a US jobs report that missed expectations and its potential impact on Federal Reserve policy. Brent crude settled down 24 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $81.75 a barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate crude was down 56 cents, or 0.7 percent, at $78.90 a barrel.
Brent gained 5.2 percent, while WTI gained 5 percent in the first week of the year, with prices at their highest since late November, spurred on by the supply concerns.
Both benchmarks were up $1 earlier in the session on Friday, but oil, along with stock markets and the dollar, came under pressure after US employment figures missed expectations.
Meanwhile, production at Kazakhstan’s top oilfield Tengiz was reduced on Thursday, its operator Chevron Corp said, as some contractors disrupted train lines in support of protests taking place across the central Asian country. Production in Libya has also dropped to 729,000 barrels per day from a high of 1.3 million bpd last year, partly due to pipeline maintenance work. On the demand side, concerns are easing amid rising evidence that Omicron coronavirus variant is less severe than previous variants.
Spot Asian liquefied natural gas prices edged up last week to keep up with a renewed rise in European gas prices, but demand remains lukewarm due to high stock levels and average temperatures. The average LNG price for February delivery into Northeast Asia edged up to around $34.30 per metric million British thermal units $0.50 higher than the previous week, industry sources said. This is still over $14 lower than a spike in the third week of December.
The slightly higher price last week has been partly due to gains in European benchmark gas prices at the Dutch TTF hub in the first week of 2022. Although Dutch gas prices cooled in late December, they have been rising again last week on continued low pipeline supplies from Russia and a cold snap.
This continues to incentivise LNG cargoes to come to Europe. Currently, there are nearly 30 LNG tankers scheduled for British, Dutch and Belgian ports for this month so far, with nearly half coming from the United States. In the US natural gas futures rose almost 3 percent to a one-week high on Friday as a major winter storm blanketed the Northeast in snow, driving overall gas demand to its highest in a day since hitting a record in 2019.
