Oil settled at a fresh three-year high in New York as the International Energy Agency opened discussions with major oil-producing nations about collapsing output from Venezuela, home to the world’s biggest petroleum reserves.
The crisis in Venezuela deepened after President Nicolas Maduro’s victory in widely-criticized elections was followed by a U.S. prohibition on buying debts owned to the government or state-owned oil company PDVSA. will intensify against the nation’s already-crippled energy industry. At the same time, cooling tensions between the U.S. and China eased concern about a trade war that would squelch energy demand in the world’s largest economies.