Unplanned global oil outage in May rise to highest since 2011

Unplanned global oil supply disruption in May reached the highest level since 2011, making the crude oil price rise quickly in May.

Unplanned global oil supply disruption averaged more than 3.6 million barrels per day in May 2016, said U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Thursday.

The average crude spot price of Brent, Dubai and West Texas intermediate (WTI) in May reached 45.9 dollars per barrel, increasing about 12.5 percent on April, according to the commodities price data released by World Bank last week.

This is the highest monthly level since the EIA began tracking the number in January 2011, as Canada, Nigeria, Iraq and Libya are the major contributors.

Canada's oil disruption increased an average 0.8 million barrels per day in May, caused by wildfires in Fort McMurrary, Alberta that forced oil workers to be evacuated.

The oil disruption in Nigeria, Iraq and Libya increased almost 0.3 million, 0.05 million and 0.05 million barrels per day in May separately caused by militant attacks against oil and gas infrastructure, bad weather in the Basra Gulf and temporarily halt of Libya' s largest oil export terminal.

The EIA expected Nigeria's disruptions to remain relatively high through 2017 because the outages are caused by political conflicts, while global oil supply outages will decrease in June as most of the recent outages, particularly in Canada, have already started to subside. 

source : xinhua