Oil settles up 1% on US crude and fuel stock draw, Venezuela supply worries

By Georgina McCartney

HOUSTON (Reuters) -Oil prices rose on Wednesday, buoyed by government data showing U.S. crude oil and fuel inventories fell last week and by mounting concerns about tighter global supply following the U.S. threat of tariffs on nations buying Venezuelan crude.

Brent crude futures settled up 77 cents, or 1.05%, at $73.79 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures settled up 65 cents, or 0.94%, at $69.65 a barrel.

At their session highs, both benchmarks were up more than $1 a barrel.

U.S. crude oil inventories fell last week as refiners kept ramping up production, while gasoline and distillate stockpiles also dropped, the Energy Information Administration said.

Crude inventories fell by 3.3 million barrels to 433.6 million barrels in the week ended March 21, the EIA said, a deeper draw than the 956,000 barrels that analysts had expected in a Reuters poll.

On Tuesday, trade in Venezuelan oil to top buyer China stalled after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on countries buying from Caracas. Days earlier, U.S. sanctions targeted China's imports from Iran.

On Monday, Trump signed an executive order authorizing blanket 25% tariffs on imports from any country that buys Venezuelan crude oil and liquid fuels.

"There is concern in the market about touching that oil so we could lose that supply," said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital LLC in New York.

"The discount on Venezuela's exports could go up to 35%, and difficulties in commercialization could generate bottlenecks that could lead to production shutdowns amounting up to 400,000 barrels per day, more than half of Venezuela's exports," said Barclays analysts in a note.

Venezuela could potentially lose $4.9 billion in revenue, or over 10% of GDP, the analysts said. Oil is Venezuela's main export, and China is already a target of U.S. import tariffs.

Chinese traders and refiners said they were waiting to see whether Beijing would direct them to stop buying.

"Physical markets are tightening as flows are shifted due to the raft of U.S. sanctions," said Ashley Kelty, analyst at Panmure Liberum.

Last week Washington imposed a new round of sanctions on Iran's oil sales, targeting entities including Shouguang Luqing Petrochemical, an independent refinery in China's Shandong province, and vessels that supplied oil to such plants.

"OPEC+ may be ramping up production in anticipation of potential U.S. sanctions, helping to offset a loss of up to 1.5 million bpd of Iranian exports without destabilizing global oil prices," said Jorge Leon, head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy.

Capping oil price gains, the U.S. reached deals with Ukraine and Russia to pause attacks at sea and against energy targets, with Washington agreeing to push to lift some sanctions against Moscow. This offset some price support from the Venezuela situation, Again Capital's Kilduff said, adding he expected to see more Russian supply on the market.

"Both China and India will likely turn to buy more Russian sanctioned crude oil instead of more closely monitored and riskier Venezuelan crude," said StoneX analyst, Alex Hodes.

Kyiv and Moscow both said they would rely on Washington to enforce the deals, while expressing scepticism about the other side.

(Reporting by Georgina McCartney in Houston, Arunima Kumar in Bengaluru, Stephanie Kelly in New York and Siyi Liu in Singapore; Editing by Sonali Paul, Kim Coghill, Jan Harvey, David Gregorio and Nia Williams)