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1st LD Writethru: Oil prices retreat on profit-taking

Xinhua, March 28, 2015 Adjust font size:

Crude prices retreated Friday as investors took profit from prior day's heavy gains.

Oil prices jumped Thursday amid geopolitical tensions in Yemen, which borders top oil producer Saudi Arabia and is on the brink of civil war.

Yemen's President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi has fled his palace in Aden Wednesday. Saudi Arabia and its allies launched strikes against Huthi rebels in a bid to help the Yemen government Thursday.

Traders shrugged off the geopolitical worries Friday as there is little sign of crude supplies disruption in the Middle East.

However, the ample global supply remained a concern. U.S. crude production reached 9.422 million barrels a day last week, the highest level since 1983, according to Energy Information Administration, the Energy Department's statistical arm.

U.S. crude supplies increased 8.2 million barrels to 466.7 million, 84.2 million barrels more than a year earlier. Meanwhile, inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for the contract, gained 1.9 million barrels to 56.3 million barrels.

Light, sweet crude for May delivery lost 2.56 U.S. dollars to settle at 48.87 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while Brent crude for May delivery moved down 2.78 dollars to close at 56.41 dollars a barrel. Endite