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| Saturday, 21 June 2003 |
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Oil price slides below $30 as US supplies rise NEW YORK, Friday (Reuters)-Oil prices fell below $30 a barrel as traders bet that strong imports will continue to rebuild low U.S. inventories. In New York, light crude CLc1 settled 40 cents lower at $29.96 a barrel, its fifth losing session in the last six, which have pulled prices down more than $2.50 a barrel from last week's three-month highs. London benchmark Brent LCOc1 rose three cents to $26.29 a barrel. U.S. government data Wednesday showed that near-record imports had boosted U.S. crude stockpiles by 3.9 million barrels last week, cutting the stock deficit from last year's levels to just over 10 percent. Low U.S. crude stocks have helped push oil prices nearly 20 percent above last year to levels that threaten to undermine already weak economic growth. Barclays Capital analyst Kevin Norrish said more stock builds were likely because recent high prices in the United States had drawn supplies from Africa, Asia and the Middle East."This supports our view that crude prices will soften as we move through the summer months," Norrish said in a report.Delays in the resumption of exports from Iraq, which before the U.S.-led war, provided 4 percent of the world's traded supply of oil, were seen holding back a steeper slide in oil prices. Baghdad's first oil exports since the war will start loading from the Turkish Mediterranean terminal of Ceyhan on Sunday, but the first month of sales will be of crude that has been sitting in storage tanks.Once these are drained, Iraqi output is still expected to be constrained to a maximum of 1.2 million barrels per day by mid-July, around half of pre-war levels, due to looting and sabotage of the country's oil infrastructure. |
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