Energy Prospectus

Note: The Crude Oil WTI contract rolled over on Sep 17, 2017 to the Nov 17 contract

Charts: https://www.investing.com/analysis/crud ... -200213821 < If we get a close above $50 the downward trend will have been broken

LONDON (Reuters) - WTI slipped below $50 per barrel on Monday morning, but stayed close to multi-month highs amid a drop in shale drilling and as refineries continued to restart after Hurricane Harvey. Brent crude futures (LCOc1) were 33 cents lower at $55.29 a barrel, near an almost five-month high of $55.99 touched on Thursday.

"Demand forecasts from OPEC and IEA ... continued to improve sentiment in the market. Refineries are also reporting a much better recovery from the recent hurricanes," ANZ bank said in a note.

Oil refineries across the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean were restarting after being shut as hurricanes Harvey and Irma battered the region over the past three weeks.

Royal Dutch Shell's (L:RDSa) Deer Park refinery in Texas was among the latest, beginning its restart on Sunday. The plant can process 325,700 barrels per day.

The refinery restarts are occurring "as signs emerge of stalling growth in the U.S. shale industry. The number of rigs drilling for oil in the U.S. fell sharply last week," ANZ said.

U.S. energy firms cut seven oil rigs in the week to Sept. 15, bringing the total to 749, the fewest since June, energy services company Baker Hughes said on Friday.

Speculators raised their net long positions in Brent futures and options by 16,962 contracts to 430,699 in the week to Sept. 12, InterContinental Exchange (ICE) data showed, the highest level since March. The increase was the first in four weeks.

Hedge funds and other money managers cut their bullish bets on U.S. crude futures and options in the week to Sept. 12, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission reported on Friday.

The IEA revised down the global refinery throughput forecast for the third quarter of 2017 by 0.7 million b/d due to Harvey. “This results in global refined product undersupply for the second consecutive quarter,” the IEA said.

On 9/11/2017, Reuters reported worsening clashes among tribes and a political void is threatening security at oil installations in Iraq’s main southern oil producing region, officials and security sources said. Iraq has concentrated security forces in the north and west to retake territory lost to the Sunni extremist group Islamic State in 2014. That has created a void in the south, home to Iraq’s biggest oilfields, where fighting between rival Shi‘ite Muslim tribes over farmland, state construction contracts and land ownership has worsened in the past few weeks. The surge in violence risks undermining government plans to lure new investment to the oil and gas sector it needs to revive an economy hit by a surge in security spending and destruction by Islamic State. Stability in Basra, the main southern city at the edge of the Gulf, is of vital importance as a hub for oil exports accounting for over 95 percent of government revenues. Officials said tribal clashes had not affected oil output yet. But this could change as recent fighting with mortars and machine guns had come close to the key West Qurna oil phase 1, West Qurna phase 2 and Majnoon oilfields north of Basra city.