Oil prices climbed on Friday as investors considered the potential fallout from the independence referendum in Iraq, according to Bloomberg MarketWatch.
November West Texas Intermediate crude added 11 cents, or 0.2%, to settle at $51.67 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. For the week, WTI was up nearly 7.7% and saw a quarterly rise of 10.5%.
November Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, tacked on 13 cents, or 0.2%, to end trading at $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 and 16.6% for the quarter.
On Monday, Kurdish voters overwhelmingly cast their ballot in favor of independence from Iraq. The results 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.
Iraq has called on other countries to stop buying oil from the Kurds and gave the region until this past Friday to surrender control of its airports or face a forced shutdown of international flights.
The Kurdish referendum has also rankled Iran and Turkey since both have Kurdish minorities and fear the referendum could create similar activities in their respective countries.
Back on the New York Mercantile Exchange, November natural gas fell a cent to $3.007 per million British thermal units. The contract is down nearly 3.5% in the last three months.