Oil edges up on North Sea pipeline outage, lower US crude supply

Brent crude prices steadied on Wednesday while WTI futures edged higher, supported by expectations of a fall in U.S. inventories and the continued outage of the North Sea Forties pipeline system.

“The API is the reason why the energy complex is slightly up this morning,” said Tamas Varga, analyst with PVM Oil Associates.

The American Petroleum Institute said on Tuesday that U.S. crude inventories fell by 5.2 million barrels in the week to Dec. 15 to 438.7 million.

Oil prices have also been supported by the continuing outage of Britain’s Forties pipeline in the North Sea, which delivers crude underpinning Brent futures.

Operator Ineos said repairs to the pipeline were underway on Wednesday after a crack was found that closed the pipeline on December 11.

Ineos has a timescale of two to four weeks for the repairs starting from December 11.
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