Brent North Sea crude for delivery in November had slumped to 67.17 dollars a barrel — the lowest point since late May, 2007 — in early London trade.
And this is an intersting post on the WSJ Environmental Capital blog on OPEC. An excerpt:
The oil cartel is really worried that the global economy is tanking and taking demand for oil with it. Today, in its monthly report, OPEC again slashed its forecast of global oil demand growth for 2009. It also said that demand for OPEC crude would fall sharply, by about 900,000 barrels a day next year.
At the same time, just as demand is really softening, OPEC expects more oil supplies to hit the markets. It figures non-OPEC countries will increase output by about 1 million barrels a day next year. That threatens to push oil prices even lower.
So what’s a cartel to do? Cut production, of course. That’s the plan for the November summit in Vienna. The smart money says OPEC will probably cut production by 1 million barrels per day — on top of the 500,000 barrels it took off the market earlier this fall. Will that be enough?
“At the very least, that should serve to stabilize oil prices,” Paul Tosseti, director of oil market analysis at PFC Energy, a Washington-based consultancy, told us. Stabilizing prices at today’s level would probably suit Saudi Arabia just fine. But there are plenty of OPEC members, such as Venezuela and Iran, that need oil closer to $100 a barrel to balance their budgets. If global economic turmoil really does turn into a serious recession that kneecaps demand for oil, those kinds of OPEC cuts may not do the trick, Mr. Tosseti said.





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