Oil prices jumped on Monday on growing Nigerian oil output disruptions and after long-time bear Goldman Sachs said the market had ended almost two years of oversupply and flipped to a deficit.
Brent crude futures were trading at $49.02 per barrel, up $1.19, or 2.5%. The international benchmark has not traded above $49 since November. US crude futures were up $1.14, or 2.5%, at $47.35 a barrel, having struck its highest intraday level since October, CNBC reported.
Supply disruptions around the world of as much as 3.75 million barrels per day have wiped out a glut that pulled down oil prices by as much as 70% between 2014 and early 2016.
The disruptions triggered a U-turn in the outlook of Goldman Sachs, which had long warned of global storage hitting capacity and of yet another oil price crash to as low as $20 per barrel.
"The oil market has gone from nearing storage saturation to being in deficit much earlier than we expected. The market likely shifted into deficit in May ... driven by both sustained strong demand as well as sharply declining production."
However, Goldman cautioned that the market would flip back into a surplus in the first half of 2017 as it said prices around $50 per barrel in the second half of 2016 would see exploration and production activity picking up.
In Nigeria, output has fallen to its lowest in decades at around 1.65 million bpd following several acts of sabotage. Venezuela's oil production has already fallen by at least 188,000 bpd this year.
In the United States, crude production has fallen to 8.8 million bpd, 8.4% below 2015 peaks as the sector suffers a wave of bankruptcies. And in China, output fell 5.6% to 4.04 million bpd in April, year-on-year.
Countering this, supply rose from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries as its producers are engaged in a race for market share. OPEC pumped 32.44 million bpd in April, up 188,000 bpd from March, the highest since at least 2008.
