Oil on high

LONDON. — Oil steadied around its highest prices in three weeks on Monday, supported by comments from Saudi Arabia that it would continue to curb shipments in line with the Opecled effort to cut global supplies.

Brent crude was last down 8c on the day at $67,23 a barrel at 10.05am GMT, after having risen almost 4 percent last week in its largest weekly gain since late October.

US West Texas Intermediate crude for April delivery eased 5c to $63,50 a barrel after rising 3 percent last week. Both contracts earlier rose to their highest since February 7.

A cold snap across Europe has encouraged some refiners to delay maintenance, which could support demand and help to put an end to a mild bout of profit-taking, analysts said.

“There is a bit of a bearish twinge to everything . . . but we believe in the second half [of the year], you’ll see demand pull the market back up again,” Natixis oil analyst Joel Hancock said.

Prices did draw some support from Saudi Arabian oil minister Khalid al-Falih, who on Saturday said the country’s crude production between January and March would be well below output caps, with exports averaging less than seven-million barrels per day. Saudi Arabia hopes Opec and its allies will be able to relax production curbs in 2019 and create a permanent framework to stabilise oil markets after the current agreement on supply cuts ends this year, Falih said. “My estimation is that it will happen sometime in 2019. But we don’t know when and we don’t know how”.