Oil prices post first quarterly gain of the year.
Concerns surround Iraqi output; U.S. oil-rig count climbs
Oil prices climbed on Friday, marking their first quarterly gain of 2017, as investors considered the potential fallout from the independence referendum in the oil-rich Kurdish region of Iraq.

November West Texas Intermediate crude CLX7 +0.04% added 11 cents, or 0.2%, to settle at $51.67 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The front-month contract was up about 2% for the week, up 7.7% for the month and saw quarterly rise of 10.5%, according to FactSet data. Based on the most-active contracts, however, prices were up around 12% from the August WTI settlement of $46.04 at the end of June.

November Brent crude UK:LCOX7 +0.17% , the global oil benchmark, tacked on 13 cents, or 0.2%, to $57.54 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures exchange. The contract, which expired at the session’s end, gained roughly 1.1% for the week, 8.8% for the month and 16.6% for the quarter.

“A tug-of-war is developing again, this time between the threat to supply in northern Iraq and growing output from U.S. shale,” said Enrico Chiorando, an analyst at energy consultancy Love Energy. “Shale production has been increasing and will continue to weigh on prices, following Brent’s longest weekly bull run since June 2016 and its fifth-consecutive weekly gain.”

Kurdish voters overwhelmingly cast their ballot in favor of independence from Iraq on Monday. The vote result may trigger a hostile response from Iraq’s central government, as well as from neighboring countries and disrupt the flow of as much as 500,000 barrels a day of Kurdish oil exported through a Turkish port.

Baghdad has called on other countries to stop buying oil from the Kurds and has given the region until Friday to surrender control of its airports or face a forced shutdown of international flights.
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