国产热热热精品,亚洲视频久久】日韩,三级婷婷在线久久,99人妻精品视频,精品九热人人肉肉在线,AV东京热一区二区,91po在线视频观看,久久激情宗合,青青草黄色手机视频

USEUROPEAFRICAASIA 中文雙語Fran?ais
Home / Fashion

Oil edges back toward $100 mark

China Daily | Updated: 2008-01-04 07:14

 Oil edges back toward $100 mark

Traders work in the crude oil options pit of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Bloomberg News

Crude oil traded yesterday near Wednesday's record of $100 a barrel as OPEC officials said the group can't curb prices and the United States refused to release emergency supplies.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is unable to counter the rally, Libyan and Qatari officials said yesterday. The US doesn't plan to tap strategic reserves, a spokeswoman for President Bush said.

"The US government's refusal to open the SPR, especially with cold weather approaching, is helping to keep prices near that $100 record," said Robert Laughlin, a senior broker at MG Global Ltd in London. "OPEC, while under pressure after yesterday's high, will ignore it."

Crude oil for February delivery rose as much as 36 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $99.98 a barrel, in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract traded at $99.70 at 11:20 am in London. On Wednesday, it jumped $3.64, or 3.8 percent, to a record close of $99.62 a barrel after touching $100 earlier in the session.

OPEC's production is already close to maximum capacity and the organization "can do nothing" to curb prices, Shokri Ghanem, the chairman of Libya's National Oil Corp, said in a telephone interview from Tripoli yesterday.

OPEC, supplier of more than 40 percent of the world's oil, can't lower the price because it's driven by speculative investors rather than fundamentals, Al Arabiya reported, citing Qatari Oil Minister Abdullah al-Attiyah.

Brent crude for February settlement rose as much as 66 cents, or 0.7 percent, to a record intraday price of $98.50 a barrel. The contract traded at $97.92 at 11:20 am on London's ICE Futures Europe exchange. On Wednesday, it gained $3.99, or 4.3 percent, to a record close of $97.84.

US crude oil inventories probably fell for a seventh straight week last week to a three-year low, a Bloomberg News survey indicated.

Stockpiles fell 2.18 million barrels in the week ended December 28 from 293.6 million, according to the median of responses by 12 analysts before a report later yesterday from the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration.

OPEC kept its production targets unchanged at its last meeting on December 5, rebuffing calls by the US to pump more oil. The group next meets on February 1. Other OPEC officials said the group is ready to boost output to cover any shortages.

"If the dispute in Nigeria leads to a shortage, OPEC will consider it appropriate to meet the shortfall," Iran's OPEC governor Hossein Kazempour Ardebili said yesterday in a telephone interview from Teheran.

Indonesia, the second-smallest OPEC producer, will propose that the group increase supply by at least 500,000 barrels a day to lower prices, said Maizar Rahman, OPEC governor for Indonesia.

Oil's push to $100 a barrel was aided by renewed violence in Nigeria, forecasts for a decline in US inventories, disruption at a European refinery, and a weaker dollar.

The dollar's 11 percent slide last year against the euro helped boost oil prices because it made commodities cheaper for buyers outside the US and attracted investors seeking a hedge against inflation.

Agencies

(China Daily 01/04/2008 page17)

Today's Top News

Editor's picks

Most Viewed

Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US
江源县| 长沙市| 中卫市| 石楼县| 武义县| 土默特左旗| 巧家县| 越西县| 宁乡县| 麻城市| 昌乐县| 滦南县| 科技| 津南区| 横山县| 汶川县| 桂林市| 磐安县| 新巴尔虎右旗| 阜阳市| 沈阳市| 称多县| 綦江县| 平顺县| 岑溪市| 淳安县| 台东市| 襄樊市| 翼城县| 普定县| 长治市| 华容县| 清河县| 漳浦县| 水城县| 维西| 开封市| 大厂| 江西省| 凭祥市| 马公市|