Brent oil prices open today’s trading session near $109 a barrel as investors raise bets that the contract may well go higher as it emerges that a return of Libyan oil production to levels before the unrest could take until 2015.<\/p>\n
Latest Brent Oil Price<\/strong><\/p>\n In London, Brent crude oil futures for October 2011 delivery was trading at $108.89 a barrel, 08.00 GMT this morning on the ICE Futures Exchange.<\/p>\n ICE Traders Report<\/strong><\/p>\n Investors and money managers increased slightly their net long position in Brent crude oil futures and options in the week ended 16th August, according to the ICE (Inter Continental Exchange) weekly Commitment of Traders report published yesterday.<\/p>\n Money managers, including hedge funds, held a net long position of 49,608 contracts, up 1.5 percent from 48,852 contracts in the week before. Traders in the category increased their long position by 2,861 and their short position by 2,105.<\/p>\n The net long position is the difference between the number of long positions, or bets that prices will rise, and short positions, or bets that prices will fall.<\/p>\n Libya Oil Production<\/strong><\/p>\n A return of Libyan oil production to levels before the unrest, 1.7 million barrels a day, or 2 percent of global supply, would take until 2015, according to a June estimate from the US IEA (International Energy Agency).<\/p>\n One of the biggest problems facing the country is ramping up their oil production from the country’s older oil fields that account for the bulk of Libya’s pre civil war crude oil output.<\/p>\n Due to their age, those fields needed to be constantly pressurised by injecting gas or water to force the oil to flow. Once that process stopped, getting the wells flowing again will be difficult.<\/p>\n New pumps may have to be installed, and hundreds of wells will need complete workovers.<\/p>\n “We estimate that it will take around 36 months for the country to recover its full production capacity.” said a recent Wood Mackenzie report.<\/p>\n Once producing 1.6 to 1.8 million barrels a day, Libyan oil production was cut to near zero after civil war broke out in February.<\/p>\n The cut, which represented about 2 percent of global oil production, caused oil prices to spike and was the main reason several developed nations released oil from their strategic stockpiles earlier this summer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n