March 17 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil rose for a second day after OPEC officials said demand is growing and U.S. Federal Reserve authorities repeated their pledge to keep the main interest rate near zero.
“OPEC says demand is increasing; this is positive for oil,” Roland Stenzel, a crude and carbon trader at E&T Energie Handelsgesellschaft mbH, said from Vienna. “Low interest rates will keep the economy on track.”
Crude for April delivery gained 76 cents, or 0.9 percent, to $82.46 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange as of 11 a.m. London time. Yesterday, the contract rose 2.4 percent, the biggest one-day gain since Feb. 16. Brent crude for May added 89 cents to $81.42 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, meeting in Vienna, agreed for a fifth time since late 2008 to keep its production limits unchanged, according to Shokri Ghanem, chairman of Libya’s National Oil Corp.
Prices are “beautiful” and there’s no reason to revisit the group’s output limits, Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said today before the start of the meeting. OPEC “should keep things as they are,” he said. Demand may grow by “around 1 million barrels” a day in the second half of the year, he said.
OPEC cut output limits by a record 4.2 million barrels a day at the end of 2008 as global demand collapsed amid the recession. Compliance dropped to 53 percent in February, it said March 10 in its monthly report. Group members were expected to maintain quotas as oil holds above $80 a barrel, according to 42 of 44 analysts and traders surveyed last week by Bloomberg News.
‘Coming Back Slowly’
“The economies of the big consumers are coming back slowly out of a recession,” OPEC President Germanico Pinto said yesterday. “We should continue the policy stated in 2008 for the moment.”
The U.S. Energy Department is scheduled to release its Weekly Petroleum Status Report at 10:30 a.m. in Washington.
U.S. crude oil inventories are expected to have increased last week as refineries stocked up before the summer holiday driving season.
Stockpiles climbed 1.1 million barrels in the week ended March 12, according to the median estimate from 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. Supplies previously gained for a sixth week to 343 million barrels, 5.5 percent above the five- year average level. Yesterday, the industry-funded American Petroleum Institute said inventories rose 403,000 barrels to 344 million, the highest since August.
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