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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for November delivery clawed its way up one cent to $89.44, while Brent for December added 26 cents to $100.58 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $26.30 to WTI, down from a discount of $25.10. Natural gas for November added five cents to $3.11. The TSX energy index lost 2.88 points to close at 446.01.

Oil prices held their uneasy ground. Supply buffers are getting thinner as the U.S.-Iran war drags on, warned Chevron chief executive officer Mike Wirth at a London energy conference. He pointed to an extraordinary gap between paper oil markets and physical ones, noting that while front-month Brent futures are trading at around $100 (U.S.) a barrel, the landed price of physical oil in Asia is around $150 (U.S.) a barrel. (In a well-supplied market, these physical and paper prices would typically differ by only a few dollars. Large gaps attract arbitrageurs.) At the same conference, Vitol CEO Russell Hardy said the crisis has evolved from a straightforward crude supply problem into a shipping and logistics problem (with tanker shortages, freight costs and other constraints keeping physical prices high and making the arbitrage harder to execute).

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