Flooding from tropical storm Harvey caused ongoing large-scale U.S. refinery outages on Tuesday, while crude prices rose on the back of supply disruptions in Colombia and Libya.

 

Refinery shutdowns from the storm helped push U.S. gasoline prices to 2015 highs of $1.7799 per gallon on Monday, although they receded slightly to $1.7320 per gallon by 0138 GMT on Tuesday.

 

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose 23 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $46.80 a barrel, after falling more than 2 percent in the previous session.

 

On international oil markets, Brent crude futures were up 20 cents or 0.4 percent, at $52.09 per barrel.

 

Massive floods caused by Harvey forced several refineries to close along the U.S. Gulf Coast, while heavy rains were spreading into the greater Houston area, which has already been hit by catastrophic flooding.

 

"Harvey’s downpours will continue over Texas and Louisiana and slowly drift northward through the end of August, exacerbating the unprecedented flooding disaster that continues to unfold,” said meteorological forecaster AccuWeather.

 

U.S. refiners have been affected more than oil producers by Harvey, which has now been downgraded to a tropical storm. Sources said Motiva will decide on Tuesday morning (local time) whether to shut the 603,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Port Arthur refinery, the nation’s largest, because of flooding.

 

"Data available so far point to sizably larger refining than production disruptions,” U.S. bank Goldman Sachs said.

 

 

 Icmal.Az