Oil climbs on Libya force majeure, Canada outage

Oil prices rose on Tuesday after Libya declared force majeure on some of its crude exports, while the loss of Canadian supplies helped lifted US crude to 3-1/2-year highs, reports Reuters.

US light crude CLc1 jumped 90 cents, or 1.2 per cent, to $74.84 a barrel, its highest since November 2014, before easing back to $74.74, up 80 cents, by 1000 GMT.

Benchmark Brent crude oil LCOc1 was up 50 cents at $77.80.

Production at Syncrude Canada's 360,000 barrels per day (bpd) oil sands facility near Fort McMurray, Alberta, was hit by a power outage last month and is likely to remain offline through July, helping drain US inventories.

A Reuters survey estimated US crude oil stockpiles fell for a fourth consecutive week, by about 3.3 million barrels, in the week ended June 29.

Stocks of gasoline and middle distillates such as heating oil and diesel fuel also drew, the survey showed.

Libya's National Oil Corp (NOC) declared force majeure on loadings from Zueitina and Hariga ports on Monday, resulting in 850,000 bpd of supplies being disrupted.

Another report from Dubai adds: Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said regional oil exports may be threatened if the United States tries to pressure its allies to stop buying Iranian crude oil, his website reported on Tuesday.

He did not elaborate, and his comments could be open to interpretation. However, they could be seen as a tacit threat to interfere with the shipping of Iran's neighbors.

Iranian officials in the past have threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipping route, in retaliation for any hostile US action against Iran.