Oil prices rise 1% on Opec sentiment

Singapore

OIL PRICES rose by around 1 per cent on Wednesday amid a stock market rebound and on expectations that an Opec-led output cut for 2019 would stabilise the supply-demand balance. Disruptions to Libyan crude exports after local militia seized the country's biggest oilfield, El Sharara, were also buoying prices, traders said.

International Brent crude oil futures were at US$60.84 per barrel, up 64 cents, or 1.1 per cent, from their last close. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at US$52.06 per barrel, up 41 cents, or 0.8 per cent.

The higher prices came amid an increase in Asian share markets on Wednesday. US President Donald Trump told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday that talks with China were taking place to defuse the trade dispute between the world's two biggest economies.

Despite Tuesday's more confident market, analysts warned of an economic slowdown. "The global economy is set to cool in 2019-20, as rising interest rates and inflation begin to limit consumption in major developed economies, and market uncertainty weakens the fundamentals in emerging markets," the Economist Intelligence Unit said in its latest outlook. REUTERS