Crude Oil Price Edges Up on Concern About Iraq’s Supply

Crude oil price edges up on concern about Iraq’s supply

NEW YORK, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) — Crude oil price rose slightly Monday after a power failure in Iraq caused traders to worry about the country’s supply.

Crude oil futures closed at 65.45 US dollars a barrel, up 10 cents on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In London, the October Brent crude-oil futures contract rose 14 cents to close at 64.50 dollars a barrel.

On Monday, shipment of about 1.6 million barrels a day were halted indefinitely after the outage shut pumps at the Basra Oil Terminal. Iraq, the fifth-largest producer in the Middle East, was sending oil to storage during the blackout.

“The Iraqi outage is cutting shipments and boosting prices,” said a Massachusetts-based energy expert.

Vulnerability in the oil supply chain cast shadow on analysts’ expectation of the future. The Center for Global Energy Studies predicted that the crude oil price would remain higher in 2006.