Oil markets are “rebalancing” but crude is “not at a fair price” yet, HE the Minister of Energy Dr Mohamed bin Saleh al-Sada has said and noted a minimum price of $65 a barrel is "badly needed at the moment".
"The oil market is recovering slowly but steadily. Luckily, the fundamentals show it is heading in the right direction," al-Sada, also the current Opec president told the Associated Press.
"I don't think we are yet at a fair price. We need to have a fairer price so that we can have the ability to invest more in order to secure the energy supply to the world and avoid any price shock," he said.
Benchmark Brent futures were trading at around $48 a barrel on Tuesday.
The oil market has moved into a production deficit earlier than expected following supply disruptions and an increase in demand, Bloomberg said quoting Goldman Sachs Group. Other banks such as Morgan Stanley, Barclays and Bank of America Corporation have also noted that supply losses are leading markets to rebalance.
"The disruptions are getting people thinking that supply may soon trail demand," Again Capital’s Kilduff said. "This is especially true given the thesis that the market was going to come into balance later this year anyway."
According to Bloomberg, investors have “some sad reasons to be optimistic” about oil prices.
Outbreaks of violence in Nigeria, export troubles in a divided Libya and wildfires ripping across the Canadian oil sands are reviving wagers that crude markets will tighten.
Speculators’ net-long position in benchmark US crude, a measure of how bets on a price increase outnumber bearish ones, climbed by the most contracts since March, according to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
"The main bullish factor has been the outages," said Michael Wittner, the New York-based head of oil-market research at Societe Generale SA.
"There are many outages, led by Nigeria and Canada. We are missing a lot of crude."
West Texas Intermediate futures are heading for a fourth-straight monthly gain, which would be the longest rally in five years, as evidence mounts that demand may soon outpace supplies.
Investors’ net-long position in WTI futures climbed 14% in the week ended May 17, according to the CFTC. Short positions, or bets crude prices will drop, shrank while longs advanced.
WTI futures surged 8.2% on the New York Mercantile Exchange during the CFTC report week, while the June contract on Friday dropped 0.9% to close and expire at $47.75 a barrel.