Crude oil prices have witnessed depressed levels for the past week with prices loosing up to $5 within 5 days.
West Texas Intermediate declined by $5.51 from 78.71 on January 15 to today’s price of 73.2 as at the time of filling this report
Brent crude fell from $82.03 pb on 15th to $76.18 pb on 27th January before recovering slightly to currently selling at selling $77.2 pb. The crude lost $4.83 within the week
Speculators’ hope of oil prices rally was dashed earlier today following the resolve to maintain oil export levels in Libya. Protesters in Libya had threatened to block crude oil exports via two terminals in the Oil Crescent. After the state oil company talked to the protesters, it said exports were running at normal rates. This is as reported by Oilprice.com citing Reuters report.
According to OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report released at the middle of this month, crude had a mixture of price movements in December. OPEC Reference Basket (ORB) rose by 0.1%, m-o-m, to average $73.07/b. The ICE Brent front-month contract fell by 0.4%, to average $73.13/b, while the NYMEX WTI front-month contract rose by or 0.2%, to average $69.70/b.