WTI crude oil seasonals
Oil is the big story of the first day of 2017 trading.
WTI crude was up more than 2.5% to a session high of $55.24 but has faded back to $53.90 and hardly higher on the day in the past hour of trading. Still, crude is up more than 20% since the OPEC decision on November 30.
A problem for crude is that it's running into a seasonal squeeze. In January 2016 and January 2015, crude lost more than 9%. In the past 10 years, the average decline in January has been 3.68%.
In the pre-crisis period, however, it was one of the strongest months.
That push-and-pull is clearly at work today but the defining factor of January (and 2017) trading will be what happens with OPEC. The gains came on signs Kuwait and Oman were following quotas but Iraq later lamented that Kurdish regions were selling more-than-envisioned to Turkey and threaten their allocation.
Iraq had agreed to cut output by 200K bpd but the Kurdish region is largely autonomous.
"We call upon the Kurdistan region to show more transparency and clarity in its exporting of oil," state television quoted Abadi as saying.
