LONDON: Crude oil held near $115 a barrel yesterday, close to a nine-month high, and was headed for its second weekly gain on increased risks of disruption to supply from Iraq.
Oilfields south of Baghdad, which export at least 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil, are unaffected. But the fighting in the north, and foreign oil firms beginning to pull out staff, pose a risk to supplies.
“The events unfolding in Iraq will continue to dictate the direction on the market and support the oil price for the time being at a high level,” said Barbara Lambrecht, analyst at Commerzbank in Frankfurt.
Brent crude slipped 15 cents to $114.91 a barrel at 0930 GMT, after reaching $115.71 on Thursday, the highest since September 9, 2013. US crude slipped two cents to $106.41.
Brent was up about 1.2 percent for the week, after rising 4.4 percent last week.
The Baiji refinery, 200km north of Iraq’s capital, was transformed into a battlefield, threatening Iraq’s domestic energy supplies.
A government spokesman said at one point on Thursday that Iraqi forces were in “complete control”. But a witness in Baiji said fighting was continuing.
COPENHAGEN: British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s is teaming up with Denmark’s Netto to compete in Britain with “hard discount” retailers currently gaining market share, the companies said on Friday.
Each partner would invest £12.5m ($21.3m) in the joint venture that will open 15 Netto stores in northern England by the end of next year. Low prices will combined with “the freshness and innovation that customers rightly associate with Denmark,” Per Bank, the chief executive of Netto’s parent company Dansk Supermarked, said in a statement.
Netto operates 1,200 stores, out of which 430 are in Denmark and the rest in Germany, Poland and Sweden. The chain pulled out of Britain in 2010 after operating there for 20 years when it sold its 193 stores to Wal-Mart division Asda.
Agencies
