Oil hovers below $103 as traders eye Saudi unrest

March 11, 2011 09:55 am | Updated 09:55 am IST - SINGAPORE

Gasoline is delivered to a station in Oakland. Oil prices hovered below $103 a barrel on Friday in Asia as traders worried protests in Saudi Arabia could escalate. File Photo

Gasoline is delivered to a station in Oakland. Oil prices hovered below $103 a barrel on Friday in Asia as traders worried protests in Saudi Arabia could escalate. File Photo

Oil prices hovered below $103 a barrel on Friday in Asia as traders worried protests in Saudi Arabia could escalate and potentially hamper production in the world’s largest crude exporter.

Benchmark crude for April delivery was up 9 cents at $102.79 a barrel at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract lost $1.68 to $102.70 on Thursday.

In London, Brent crude was up 7 cents at $115.50 a barrel on the ICE futures exchange.

On Thursday, Saudi police attacked a protest by minority Shiites in the eastern city of Qatif. Shiites, who account for about 10 percent of the kingdom’s 23 million population, have protested for two days demanding the release of political prisoners.

Pro-democracy activists have called for protests on Friday in the capital, Riyadh, to demand reforms to the monarchy. Public demonstrations are banned in Saudi Arabia.

Investors are sensitive to any sign of upheaval in Saudi Arabia because the OPEC leader has been using its spare capacity to make up for output lost amid the violent uprising against Libya’s government. When news broke that Saudi Arabian police fired shots to break up the protest Thursday, prices soared $3 in just 12 minutes.

“Our biggest fear has been that the unrest infecting the Middle East would surface as violence or bloodshed in Saudi Arabia,” Cameron Hanover said in a report. “If protests start to create martyrs in Saudi Arabia, then it could be the beginning of the end.”

In other Nymex trading for April contracts, heating oil was up 0.8 cent at $3.05 a gallon and gasoline rose 1 cent to $3.03 a gallon. Natural gas was down 0.9 cent at $3.82 per 1,000 cubic feet.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.