Mubasher: Oil prices edged up on Thursday, with Brent crude exceeding its highest since November last year, as supply cuts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and US sanctions against Venezuela and Iran kicked in.

In addition, a surprise drop in US crude stockpiles and output gave a push for prices, traders told Thomson Reuters.

By 8:36 am GMT, global benchmark Brent futures climbed 0.78% to $68.08 per barrel (pb), beyond the $67.84 pb reached in Asian trading, their highest so far this year, while US Nymex futures rose 0.64% to $58.06 pb.

“Tighter global inventories from OPEC-led supply cuts and [...] US sanctions on Venezuelan petroleum products have cemented support for oil prices,” Singapore-based brokerage Phillip Futures Benjamin Lu told Thomson Reuters.

Since the beginning of the year, a group of OPEC members and allied producers, including Russia has been withholding supply, aiming to tighten global markets and shore up prices.

In Venezuela, crude production and exports have been shut down amidst a political and economic crisis, which resulted in the worst blackout on record.

The US barred companies from conducting business with the Venezuelan regime, including state-run oil firm Petroleos de Venezuela (PdVSA), Reuters said, citing an oil industry source and a lawmaker.

In addition, Washington pushes to knock crude exports in Iran, another US-sanctioned oil-rich nation, by nearly 20% to below 1 million barrels per day (bpd) from May, by requiring importers to cut their purchases to evade sanctions, the news agency said, citing two familiar sources.

Moreover, US crude inventories dropped by 3.9 million barrels last week, to 449.07 million barrels, and oil production also fell by 100,000 bpd to 12 million bpd, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said.

Meanwhile, analysts polled by Reuters expected a build of 2.7 million barrels.

However, oil prices could also come under downward pressure from a global economic slowdown.

China saw its industrial output falling to a 17-year low of 5.3% in the first two months of this year, as per shown by official data on Thursday.