Crude futures traded higher Monday, finding support after Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched a drone attack over the weekend on one of Saudi Arabia’s largest oil fields.
West Texas Intermediate crude for September delivery CLU19, +0.58% rose 35 cents, or 0.6%, to $55.22 a barrel, while October Brent BRNV19, +0.60% rose 50 cents, or 0.9%, to $59.14 a barrel.
The Houthis on Saturday said they targeted the Shaybah oil field, which is owned by Saudi Arabian Oil Co., or Aramco, and holds about 14 billion barrels of oil, according to The Wall Street Journal. Aramco said a fire was extinguished at a natural-gas processing plant and that there were no injuries and no disruptions to production at the field, which produces around 1 million barrels of oil a day.
“Though oil production there has not been affected, this nonetheless puts the spotlight once again on the supply risks in the Middle East,” said Cartsen Fritsch, analyst at Commerzbank, in a note.
Stock-index futures pointed to a higher start for Wall Street as global equities were buoyed by encouraging comments from President Donald Trump and other officials on trade talks, along with a move by China over the weekend to lower borrowing costs for companies. Also, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said Berlin could come up with fiscal stimulus if needed, as Europe’s largest economy threatens to tip into recession.
Volatile global financial markets, including a sharp stock-market selloff Wednesday following an inversion of the main measure of the U.S. yield curve, reflected growing anxiety about the global economic outlook and, for oil traders, underlined worries about demand.
See: Stock-market investors rattled by bond market’s ‘warning shot’ — here’s what’s next
Oil saw whipsaw trading action but booked weekly gains. WTI remains down around 6% so far in August, however, while Brent is down around 9.5%, according to FactSet.
In other energy trading, September gasoline RBU19, +0.26% was little changed at $1.6575 a gallon, while September heating oil HOU19, +0.19% was up 0.2% at $1.8171 a gallon.
September natural-gas futures NGU19, -2.82% fell 1.4% to $2.17 per million British thermal units.
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