North Sea crude oil prices slipped back from three-year highs yesterday as traders took profits from the recent rally – but healthy demand underpinned prices near $70-barrel – a level not seen since the market slump on the way down in 2014.
Fundamentally, oil prices have been pushed higher by an effort led by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia to withhold production since January last year. The cuts are set to last through 2018.
The restraint has coincided with healthy oil demand, pushing up crude by almost 15 percent since early December.
Brent futures LCOc1 fell $1.05, or 1.5 percent, to $69.21 a barrel after hitting a session low of $68.92. Traders said Brent, the global benchmark, was well supported overall at around $70.
Brent crude had earlier hit a peak of $70.37 on Monday, matching a high from December 2014 at the start of a three-year market decline.
In a market research note, US bank Goldman Sachs said las night: “We see increasing upside risks to our $62-barrel Brent forecast for the coming months.”
Other banks, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Societe Generale and Morgan Stanley, have raised their price forecasts.
Commenting on the three-year high, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said the oil market was not yet balanced and that the global deal to cut output should continue as the price rise could be due to cold weather.
The US oil rig count, an early indicator of future output, rose by 10 oil rigs last week to 752 and is much higher than a year ago when only 522 rigs were active.
17 Jan 2018
Meanwhile, Scottish Energy News is presently offering a premier-position sponsored-advertising banner (which would be interactive and click-able to the sponsor’s website, see above)
This would be updated in real time with the latest N. Sea benchmark Brent crude oil price-per-barrel in a ‘standard’ ticker-tape wire report – which means your banner-adv would be clicked many times per day.
This offer is open to the entire oil and gas supply chain – not just explorers – as well as advisers such as business advisory firms.
But only one such offer is available and will be made on a first-come, first-served, basis.
This offer is similar to the highly effective banner-adv which Scottish Energy News publishes daily for the Scientific Alliance, which is updated live with the latest type of energy generation load (ie coal, gas, wind, solar, nuclear,) on the UK National Grid (see also below).
In addition to the corporate/ generic <insert name of your company> wrapper around the near-live crude oil price update banner-adv, you as client could additionally insert corporation information, such as on recent industry awards, new appointments, annual results, major investments, etc..

We know – and can prove – that Scientific Alliance banner-adv is one of the most frequently visited and clicked adv on the Scottish Energy News daily e-newsletter.
Any such sponsored-adv would be published on both the home page of the www.ScottishEnergyNews.com website and in the daily e-newsletter sent to 4,500 individually-addressed recipients.
The Scottish Energy News website attracted an average of 9,000 unique visitors per month (Jan-Dec 2017) in addition to 4,500 direct, daily e-newsletter recipients.
For more information:
Sales@ScottishEnergyNews.com
Ph + 44 (0131) 476 4735