By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press WriterFri Jul 13, 9:54 AM ET
Oil prices rose slightly Friday, with prices gaining support from an International Energy Agency report saying global energy consumption would increase next year.
The agency also predicted mixed global refinery performance for the rest of the summer.
Light, sweet crude for August delivery advanced 9 cents to $72.59 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by midday in Europe. The contract settled Thursday at $72.50 a barrel, down 6 cents after dropping sharply from highs hit early in the session.
August Brent gained 14 cents to fetch $76.54 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London. Vienna's PVM Oil Associates noted "two small platforms in the North Sea that have reportedly stopped producing" as helping to underpin Brent prices.
The report from the IEA — the developed countries' energy watchdog — noted that global energy consumption will likely rise at its fastest clip in recent years in 2008 but high oil prices persisting above $70 a barrel may steadily eat away at demand. The agency forecast world oil demand growth next year at 2.5 percent — 2.2 million barrels a day, based on expectations for a colder winter in the U.S. and Europe and robust industrial demand in China and the Middle East.
The Paris-based agency also forecast rising global refinery runs this summer — with possible glitches in the U.S.
It predicted global refinery runs would reach 74.2 million barrels a day in July and peak the following month at 75.2 million barrels a day, assuming U.S refinery problems ease. But the agency warned that "North American crude throughput remains constrained by the large number of refineries running at less than full capacity due to operational problems."
News that several refineries were restarting shuttered operations were expected to keep gasoline prices in check.
Analysts say the July 1 closure of a refinery in Coffeyville, Kansas, due to flooding, and the shutdown this week of a huge piece of oil processing equipment at a BP PLC refinery in Whiting, Indiana, sent prices in the Midwest and Plains states sharply higher, boosting the national average.
But BP has said its 250,000 barrel-per-day unit would be up and running by the weekend, and refinery utilization rates rose last week, according to Wednesday's inventory report from the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration.
Energy futures rose to 10-month highs after another weekly EIA report in late June showed gasoline inventories dropped when analysts had expected a gain. Gas inventories and refinery utilization levels have grown in the two weeks since, but that has done little to kill the rally.
Nymex heating oil prices were essentially flat at $2.0998 a gallon, and natural gas futures gained 6.3 cents to $6.560 per 1,000 cubic feet.
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