On Wednesday, oil settled in at a two year peak following the shutdown of crude pipelines from Canada cutting supply to the United States.
A spill last week caused the 590,000 bpd Keystone pipeline to shutdown, it could take weeks to restart the said pipeline. According to operator TransCanada Corp, their clients will have to cut deliveries on the pipeline linking U.S. refineries with Alberta’s oil sands by 85 percent up until the end of November.
West Texas Intermediate crude futures settled at 2 percent or $1.19 at $58.02 a barrel, seen as the highest since July of 2015, due to worries over diminished supplies on the Keystone pipeline and the reported 6.4 million barrel crude drawdown from the American Petroleum Institute.
Crude surged to $58.09 earlier in the session and then cuts gains following the weekly government data that revealed the decline of crude inventories of 1.9 million barrels.
In Cushing, Oklahoma delivery hub for WTI futures, crude stocks decreased by 1.8 million barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Brent crude settled up 1.2 percent or 75 cents at $63.32 per barrel.
Exxon Mobil joined other European oil firms including Total and Royal Dutch Shell in their latest plan to find new methods to lessen potent emissions in their fast expanding natural gas operations.
Italy’s Eni, Spain’s Repsol, Shell, Exxon, Norway’s Statoil, BP Wintershall and Total pledged to further diminish methane emissions from natural gas assets, according to their joint statement.
Methane is considered as one of the most potent greenhouse gas that is being emitted into the atmosphere, it is released during the extraction, transporting and processing of natural gas.
As stated by Shell, an average of 10 percent of gas that is transformed into LNG (liquified natural gas) is discharged into the atmosphere between production and consumption.
This new initiative among oil firms is the latest move by the world’s leading oil and gas companies to decrease carbon emissions from their operations to aid in the U.N. backed plans to diminish global warming.