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Oil hovers around $ 57 as hurricane fears ease
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Oil hovers around $ 57 as hurricane fears ease
Oil prices held around $57 yesterday, as fears of supply disruption eased on expectations that Hurricane Emily might not damage most US oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico.US light, sweet crude oil futures dipped 6 cents to $ 57.26 a barrel in early Asian trade, after closing 77 cents lower in New York. London Brent crude edged up a cent to $57.00 a barrel after ending down 62 cents on Monday.
“There’s not much direction, with Emily out of the picture. Now, I suppose the market will focus its attention on the statistics”, said Tony Nunan, a Tokyo-based manager at Mitsubishi Corp.’s international energy business, referring to the weekly US inventory data.“There’s a lot of crude available and once the storms subside, there will probably be more. I am short-term bearish though, in the medium to long-term, the market is still bullish.”
US crude inventories are expected to have fallen 3.3 million barrels in the week ended July 15 as a previous hurricane, Dennis, delayed import offloading in the US Gulf Coast, a Reuters survey of eight analysts found. Stock levels have fallen 7.5 million barrels in the two weeks to July 8. Distillates stocks are expected to have risen another 1.8 million barrels in the latest week after having risen 16.6 million barrels between May 20 and July 8.
The slower growth in world demand due to high prices has also weighed on the market. The Paris-based International Energy Agency has revised down its forecast for global oil demand growth this year by 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 1.58 million bpd.OPEC has also downgraded its forecast for demand growth in 2005 by 150,000 bpd.“It is a big concern that demand growth in China has been drastically reduced. The government has kept domestic prices low against high international prices and this has affected demand,” Nunan said. “However, it’s a reduction in growth and not negative growth. I don’t think this can last very long and I am still bullish in the long term as far as China is concerned.”
<B>Yaw Yan CHONG</B>
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