SINGAPORE, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Oil was heading for a weekly
drop on Friday, erasing gains related to the week-long shutdown
of Enbridge's biggest Canada-U.S. pipeline, now scheduled to
restart in a matter of hours.
FUNDAMENTALS
* U.S. crude for October <CLc1> fell 9 cents to $74.48 a
barrel by 0035 GMT, having touched $74.11 on Thursday, the
lowest intraday price since Sept. 9, when a leak forced
Enbridge to halt crude flows through the 670,000-barrel-per-day
(bpd) Line 6A, supplying refiners in the U.S. Midwest.
* Prices touched a one-month high of $78.04 earlier this
week on expectations of an extended outage.
* Enbridge Inc <ENB.TO> has completed repairs and received
regulatory approval to restart the duct on Friday, which
carries up to a third of Canada's U.S.-bound crude shipments,
restoring nearly 5 percent of imports by the world's largest
oil consuming nation. []
* Line 6A is the main artery of Enbridge's Lakehead
Pipeline System, the backbone of U.S. oil imports from top
supplier Canada. The line serves refineries with a combined
capacity of more than 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in the
Chicago area and connects with a spur that reaches a key
storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma. For a map:
http://link.reuters.com/mes92p
* The pipeline's shutdown a week ago raised expectations
that high inventories at the Cushing pricing hub for U.S. crude
benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) would drain, bringing
WTI prices more in line with strong values for European marker
Brent.
* ICE Brent for November <LCOc1> was trading down 11 cents
at $78.37 on Friday, commanding a premium of more than $2.65 to
the November WTI contract, after October Brent expired on
Wednesday.
* Crude stored at the Cushing hub rose by 93,496 barrels to
37.66 million barrels in the week to Sept. 14, according to a
report from industry data provider Genscape on Thursday.
[]
* The energy industry data provider estimated that Cushing
crude tanks were filled to 72 percent of shell capacity as of
Tuesday, unchanged from last week.
MARKETS NEWS
* Asian equities edged higher on Friday after U.S. stocks
were mildly positive a day earlier, as a mood of uncertainty
about the strength of the global recovery prevailed across
markets. []
* New U.S. claims for jobless benefits hit a two-month low
last week, hinting at some stability in the labor market, while
the contraction in factory activity in the Mid-Atlantic region
slowed in September. []
* The reports on Thursday further reduced the odds of a
double-dip recession and suggested less of a need for the
Federal Reserve to launch a fresh round of asset purchases to
aid the economic recovery.
DATA/EVENTS
* The following data is expected on Friday, GMT:
- 1230 U.S. CPI Index level Aug
- 1430 U.S. ECRI weekly index
RELATED NEWS
* Hurricane Karl formed in the southern Gulf of Mexico on
Thursday and gained strength as it headed across Mexico's
offshore oil patch. []
* No damage was reported at Mexican oil drilling platforms
and state-run oil giant Pemex has not curtailed operations, but
it is monitoring Karl's progress across the Bay of Campeche in
the Gulf, where the bulk of Mexico's 2.55 million barrels per
day of oil is produced. []
* Two of Mexico's main oil exporting ports closed as Karl
passed through the region. []
(Reporting by Alejandro Barbajosa; Editing by Manash Goswami)
