Boeing helped lead the Dow higher, gaining $1.71, or 2.1 percent, to $82.94, after the aircraft manufacturer said strong demand was prompting it to increase its production rates of commercial planes.
But having trimmed down, Shell now finds that it needs to bulk up if it is to increase its production and reserves.
Saudi Arabia promised earlier in the year to increase its production capacity, but it actually cut production recently, claiming that the world markets were flush.
Senate Democrats have introduced a resolution that would block $1.4bn in arms sales to Saudi Arabia — the world's biggest oil supplier — unless it agrees to increase its production by 1m barrels a day.
Iraq said tonight that it planned to significantly increase its production by the end of the year, but experts were skeptical.
The Saudi embassy in Washington D.C. did not respond to a VICE News request for comment on whether it would seek to increase its production quota.
B5 Coping With the Threat MAKING THE ANTIBIOTIC -- As demand for the antibiotic Cipro skyrockets, Bayer, the German company that makes the drug in the United States, says it has only begun to increase its production and will probably take months to produce the drug in the quantities the government wants.
It will enable Keroche to increase its production ten-fold, from 10 million litres of beer per year to 110 million litres.
So clearly it expects Apple's additional business to increase its production quite a bit.
If all the companies participating in the industry's revival "are reasonably successful in delivering on the commitments we've made, it is quite likely we will see Iraq increase its production to around 10 million barrels per day within about 10 years," Tony Hayward, chief executive of BP, told the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, last month.
But U.S. Polychemical of Spring Valley, N.Y., which makes a dispersant called Dispersit SPC 1000, said Thursday morning that it had received an order from BP and would increase its production to 20,000 gallons a day in the next few days, and eventually to as much as 60,000 gallons a day.
