Energy stocks were gaining premarket Monday as the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLE) was recently advancing by over 1%. The United States Oil Fund (USO) was up 1.8% and the United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG) was over 3% lower.
West Texas Intermediate crude oil was up 1.8% at $70.55 per barrel at the New York Mercantile Exchange. The global benchmark Brent crude gained 1.6% to $76.17 per barrel and natural gas futures were 5.3% lower at $2.10 per 1 million BTU.
ConocoPhillips (COP) said it plans to become the upstream operator of Australia Pacific LNG and that it has agreed to acquire up to an additional 2.49% stake in the latter for $500 million, adding to its existing 47.5% interest. ConocoPhillips was recently climbing 1.7%.
Energy Transfer (ET) was advancing 0.9% after saying it has agreed to acquire Lotus Midstream Operations from an affiliate of EnCap Flatrock Midstream in a transaction valued at $1.45 billion.
Ecopetrol (EC) said it has appointed Alberto Consuegra Granger as interim chief executive officer, effective April 1. Ecopetrol was 1.8% higher recently.
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