Oil Supply Cuts Rise--Reuters

Reuters has discovered another reason that oil prices are so high. The news agency reports worldwide supply outages robbed the market of 1.2 million barrels of crude a day in March . Among the causes were civil unrest and technical problems. Reuters explained, “While disruptions of supply to the world oil market are commonplace, it is rare and perhaps unprecedented that such a large volume of oil is offline at any one time outside a single major disruption.”. The problem may not be resolved soon. The US has not released any of its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as was hoped. The Saudis say they will increase production enough to offset drops in output elsewhere, but that has not pushed prices lower. And, the Iranian threat to oil ship passage through the Strait or Hormuz has not ended.