Oil rose on Monday, putting July on track to become the strongest month this year, as news of a producers' technical meeting next week added to bullish sentiment driven by the threat of US sanctions against the Opec member Venezuela.
Oil traders also eyed the bullish impact from a production outage following a fire at Europe's largest refinery and further signs that the US market is tightening after heavy inventory falls and slower new oil rig additions last week.
"The sentiment in the oil market became very bullish after Opec said it will meet with partners in Abu Dhabi next week to discuss compliance," said Frank Schallenberger, the head of commodity research at LBBW.
Some Opec and non-Opec members will meet on Aug. 7-8 in Abu Dhabi to assess how the group can increase compliance with production cuts that began on Jan. 1.
Brent crude futures traded at US$52.56 a barrel at 08.27 GMT, up 4 cents on Friday's close. Prices hit $52.92 a barrel, their highest since May 25.
US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures after briefly topping $50 per barrel were at $49.72 a barrel, up 1 cent.
Hedge funds and money managers have raised bullish bets on US crude oil to their highest in three months, data showed on Friday.
The United States is considering imposing sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector in response to Sunday's election of a constitutional super-body, which Washington has denounced as a "sham" vote.
In Europe, a production outage at Shell's 404,000 barrel-per-day Pernis refinery in the Netherlands following a fire sent benchmark European diesel margins, which reflect the profit made from refining crude oil into the road fuel, to their highest since November 2015 at $14.60 per barrel.
US production has hampered efforts to rebalance the market but signs the market is tightening have emerged.
"Strong increases in the price of oil ... [were] fuelled in large part by the substantial drawdowns in US inventories over the past several weeks," said William O'Loughlin, an analyst at Rivkin Securities.
US crude inventories have fallen by 10 per cent from their March peaks to 483.4 million barrels.
US output dipped by 0.2 per cent to 9.41 million barrels per day (bpd) in the week to July 21, after rising by more than 10 per cent since mid-2016.
Drilling for new US production is also slowing, with just 10 rigs added in July, the fewest since May 2016.
* Reuters
How much sugar is in chocolate Easter eggs?
- The 169g Crunchie egg has 15.9g of sugar per 25g serving, working out at around 107g of sugar per egg
- The 190g Maltesers Teasers egg contains 58g of sugar per 100g for the egg and 19.6g of sugar in each of the two Teasers bars that come with it
- The 188g Smarties egg has 113g of sugar per egg and 22.8g in the tube of Smarties it contains
- The Milky Bar white chocolate Egg Hunt Pack contains eight eggs at 7.7g of sugar per egg
- The Cadbury Creme Egg contains 26g of sugar per 40g egg
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Common OCD symptoms and how they manifest
Checking: the obsession or thoughts focus on some harm coming from things not being as they should, which usually centre around the theme of safety. For example, the obsession is “the building will burn down”, therefore the compulsion is checking that the oven is switched off.
Contamination: the obsession is focused on the presence of germs, dirt or harmful bacteria and how this will impact the person and/or their loved ones. For example, the obsession is “the floor is dirty; me and my family will get sick and die”, the compulsion is repetitive cleaning.
Orderliness: the obsession is a fear of sitting with uncomfortable feelings, or to prevent harm coming to oneself or others. Objectively there appears to be no logical link between the obsession and compulsion. For example,” I won’t feel right if the jars aren’t lined up” or “harm will come to my family if I don’t line up all the jars”, so the compulsion is therefore lining up the jars.
Intrusive thoughts: the intrusive thought is usually highly distressing and repetitive. Common examples may include thoughts of perpetrating violence towards others, harming others, or questions over one’s character or deeds, usually in conflict with the person’s true values. An example would be: “I think I might hurt my family”, which in turn leads to the compulsion of avoiding social gatherings.
Hoarding: the intrusive thought is the overvaluing of objects or possessions, while the compulsion is stashing or hoarding these items and refusing to let them go. For example, “this newspaper may come in useful one day”, therefore, the compulsion is hoarding newspapers instead of discarding them the next day.
Source: Dr Robert Chandler, clinical psychologist at Lighthouse Arabia
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Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
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