Sunday 18 December 2011

Oil Falls below $100 before OPEC Meet

Oil prices fell below $100 on December 14, 2011 in Asia amid apprehensions that OPEC will keep its output quota unmodified. Benchmark Crude witnessed a 29 cent fall and reached close to $99 per barrel in Singapore electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contact however rose only to settle down at $100.14 later.

Brent crude in London was down by 16 cents and was at $109.34 on the ICE exchange. The OPEC was scheduled to meet a day later in Vienna amidst a slow global economy which is threatened by rising costs of energy. The OPEC which is a 12 nation conglomerate will also try to avoid the supply vacuum created by less supply from Libya which is likely to assume normal hood by only the next year.

The Cartel said a consultant at Ritterbusch and Associates shall aim to thin out any gaps leading to further escalation in prices and also to bring back Libyan supplies in the market. There are further opinions that crude supplies need to increase amidst increasing oil demands in the developing countries.
Chief Economist at International Energy Agency said that energy producing nations are surely wary of the ever increasing oil prices and the effect on the global economy and thus should make their decisions accordingly.

Another report revealed that US supplies of energy remained unchanged last week and a day prior to the scheduled meeting, US crude inventories rose to reach 462,000 barrels while there was a prediction of 2.0 million barrels decrease by the energy information wing of Mc Graw-Hills cos.
Gasoline inventories fell and reached 12,000 barrels while distillates rose to 1.2 million barrels as reported by the API. In Nymex trading exchange natural gas was low by 2.0 cents while heating oil fell by 0 .5 cents as Gasoline slid by 0.8 cents.

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