| World oil prices began to rise For several days in a row, world oil prices fell, which greatly worried Russian oil workers. Yesterday, prices finally began to rise slightly on the London and New York stock exchanges. Yesterday, by noon, the price of a barrel of brent on IPE reached $24.68 (an increase of $0.25), and light sweet on the NYMEX reached $27.52 (an increase of $0.2).
Prior to this, oil quotes had been declining for several days: February futures for the Brent grade on the IPE in London on Friday averaged $25.18 per barrel, on Monday - $24.43, for the light sweet grade on the NYMEX, respectively, 27 .95 and 27.32 dollars per barrel. American analysts cite increased signs of a possible recession in the US economy as the reason for the price decline. Their Russian colleagues, on the contrary, believe that anticipation of this trend can force stock exchange speculators to play on quotes for a maximum of two or three days.
According to the oil agency Petroleum Argus, while the average price on the stock exchange was falling, physical prices have been growing moderately since January 2: Brent rose by $1.85 per barrel over the week to $25.11, and Russian urals by as much as 2 dollars to 24.51 dollars. The reason for this, the agency representative believes, was, among other things, the expectation of a reduction in production by OPEC countries at the summit on January 17.
The further behavior of prices primarily depends on how much the cartel will reduce production - by 1.5 or 2 million barrels per day (for comparison: last year OPEC increased daily production by a total of 3.7 million barrels). As a representative of Iran's oil minister said, in just the first half of the year, the reduction in oil supplies could reach 3 million barrels per day.
The price of Russian urals, according to experts, depends primarily on the policy of Iraq. A few days ago, Baghdad suspended exports of raw materials, hoping in this way to solve the problem of the price of its own oil. For this reason, the demand for Russian high-sulfur oil (similar in quality to the Iraqi kirkuk grade) increased, and as a result, the physical price began to rise. However, yesterday Iraqi Oil Minister Amir Mohammed Rashid said that his country would soon resume full oil export supplies. Analysts are not yet predicting how this fact will affect the price of Russian raw materials. Nikolay GORELOV |
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