Bonny Light Hits $71.74pb

…To leap further on Libya, other crises

The price of Bonny Light, Nigeria’s premium oil grade has risen from $70 to $71.74 per barrel in the international market, the highest in 2019, as the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC,  continue to eliminate excess supply from the volatile market.

This showed that at the current price, Nigeria generated $11.74, in excess of the $60 per barrel benchmark of the 2019 budget.

The prices of other crudes – Brent, WTI and OPEC Basket also rose from $69 to $70.64, $62.50 to $63.94 and $69.50 to $70.33 respectively, yesterday.

Meanwhile, close market watchers have predicted that oil price would continue to leap in the coming weeks, mainly because of crises in major oil and gas producing nations, especially because of crises in some oil producing nations, especially Libya, Venezuela and Iran.

Oil price.com stated: “The situation in Libya escalated surprisingly quickly last week when the Libyan National Army, a formation affiliated with the eastern Libyan government, launched an attack on the UN-recognized cabinet in Tripoli. The attack followed a statement by LNA leader General Khalifa Haftar that Libya will soon have a single government, sparking hopes of a negotiation between the two rival governments.

“Of course, Venezuela and Iran continue to be the usual suspects when it comes to near-term oil price projections with U.S. sanctions targeting the oil industry of both countries as a regime-changing tool.”

It stated: “In fact, the latest shipping data from Reuters and TankerTrackers.com revealed that Venezuela’s March oil exports remained surprisingly stable on February despite the string of blackouts, at a daily rate of around 900,000 bpd.

As for Iran, the analyst said Washington’s aim of bringing down the country’s oil exports to zero was “unrealistic” and “possibly even delusional”, adding that the higher prices rose, the more demand there will be for Iranian oil and it will “find an outlet.”

Brent crude passed the US$70 a barrel mark for the first time in months a few days ago and now, thanks to the new from Libya, it has continued rising.”

Available data showed that oil price had dropped to about $60.00, thus threatening the execution of Nigeria’s 2019 budget, before leaping again in the past few weeks.

SOURCE: VanguardNews