OPEC daily basket price stood at $58.49 a barrel Thursday, 2 November 2017

Brent crude futures LCOc1 were up 59 cents at $61.53 per barrel at 0905 GMT, having hit a session peak of $61.70 earlier, the highest since July 2015. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 was at $55.12 a barrel, up 74 cents.

ICE Brent crude futures remained at 27-month highs in mid-morning trade in Asia Monday, following the gains last week on the expectation that planned supply cuts will be extended to the end of 2018.

Access to modern energy is incomplete. With a total population of nearly 640 million, an estimated 65 million people remain without electricity and 250 million are reliant on solid biomass as a cooking fuel. Investment in upstream oil and gas has been hit by lower prices since 2014 and the region faces a dwindling position as a gas exporter, and a rising dependency on imported oil.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government wants to raise the share of natural gas in India’s energy mix to 15 percent in the next few years from about 6.5 percent now.

Shell has completed the sale of a package of UK North Sea assets to Chrysaor for a total of up to $3.8bn, including an initial consideration of $3.0bn and a payment of up to $600m between 2018-2021 subject to commodity price, with potential further payments of up to $180m for future discoveries. This sale was announced on 31 January 2017 and has an effective date of 1 July 2016. Completion follows receipt of all necessary regulatory and partner approvals.

Royal Dutch Shell plc (Shell), through its affiliates, has completed the sale of its entire Gabon onshore oil and gas interests to Assala Energy Holdings Ltd. (Assala Energy) a portfolio company of The Carlyle Group (CG: NASDAQ), for a total of USD $628 million including amount equivalent to interest.

Brent crude futures, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $60.55 per barrel at 0655 GMT, 10 cents or 0.15 percent above their last settlement and near their highest level since July 2015. They have risen more than 36 percent since from 2017-lows marked in June. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up 11 cents, or 0.2 percent, at $54.01 a barrel.

WBG - Oil prices are forecast to rise to $56 a barrel in 2018 from $53 this year as a result of steadily growing demand, agreed production cuts among oil exporters and stabilizing U.S. shale oil production, while the surge in metals prices is expected to level off next year, the World Bank said.

ExxonMobil and Chevron, the two largest US oil and gas groups, are continuing to lose money on oil and gas production in their home country, in spite of the rise in commodity prices since last year.