Oil prices stall near highest level since mid2015 on Libya pipeline

Crude slipped from the highest level in two and a half years amid light trading volume and reports that repairs to a Libyan pipeline should wrap up next week.

Futures fell as much as 1.1 percent in New York amid holiday trading volume about 44 percent below the 100-day average. The Waha Oil Co. pipeline that carries crude to Libya’s Es sider terminal will need about a week for repairs, according to people familiar with the situation. The line exploded on Tuesday and the nation’s output is said to have dropped below 1 million barrels a day.

“You have a few people wrapping up their books” at the end of the year, Ashley Petersen, lead oil analyst at Stratas Advisors in New York, said in a telephone interview. At the same time, the market is “probably reassured now. I don’t think it’s going to take a very long time to fix” the line that exploded in Libya.

West Texas Intermediate for February delivery slipped 26 cents to $59.71 a barrel at 10:44 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange after rising above $60 a barrel for the first time since June 2015 in intra day trading Tuesday. Brent for February settlement dropped 38 cents to $66.64 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The global benchmark crude traded at a premium of $6.93 to WTI.

Crude loadings at Es Sider, Libya’s biggest crude export terminal, are down by about half after the blast on the line which supplied the terminal, according to people familiar with the situation.

Oil is set for a fourth monthly gain amid supply cuts from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies including Russia, which will run through the end of next year. Prices also received a boost this month from a pipeline outage in the North Sea. In the U.S., additions to the oil rig count have stalled even with oil prices in the upper-$50s.