Oil prices held above $50 a barrel on Wednesday following a 3 percent jump a day earlier on the back of Brazilian and Libyan supply worries, a U.S. pipeline outage and a general rally in riskier assets on hopes of more economic stimulus measures.
Brent and U.S. futures for December delivery traded little changed by 1025 GMT (5.25 a.m. ET) at $50.59 and $47.93 respectively. Brent ended the last session $1.75, or 3.6 percent, higher while U.S crude rose $1.76, or 3.8 percent on Tuesday.
U.S. crude hit its highest since Oct. 13 during Tuesday’s session after the U.S. Colonial Pipeline suspended operations due to flooding, on outage that came on top of a strike at Brazil’s state oil producer Petrobras and the closure of the Libyan oil export terminal.
The Petrobras strike has slowed daily oil output by about 25 percent in the world’s ninth biggest oil producer.
“While a few days of even 500,000 barrels per day of lost supply are clearly not an issue, a sustained outage of this magnitude heading into December when refinery runs reach a seasonal high could be a reasonably bullish factor,” JBC Energy analysts said in a note.
Brazil Energy Insight 
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