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Oil price stay below $50

24 April 2009 08:14 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Vahab Rzayev â€“ APA-Economics. Crude oil fell, set for a third weekly decline, as the global recession sapped demand for fuels and OPEC slowed the rate of cuts to its production, Bloomberg reported.
Oil snapped three days of gains after International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said yesterday that the economic crisis is â€œfar from over.â€ The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will trim crude oil shipments by 0.6 percent in the four weeks ending May 9 as output cuts falter, said Oil Movements, the Halifax, England- based tanker-tracker.
Crude oil for June delivery fell as much as 56 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $49.06 a barrel, and traded at $49.22 at 1:17 p.m. Singapore time on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices have dropped 2.1 percent this week.
Oil has declined 67 percent from a record $147.27 a barrel reached on July 11 because of reduced global demand for crude.
Futures have traded between $43.83 and $54.66 a barrel in the past month as surging U.S. inventories coincided with rising equity prices. Earlier this week, the U.S. Energy Department reported crude stockpiles rose for a seventh consecutive week to the highest since September 1990.

Total daily fuel demand in the U.S., the worldâ€™s largest oil consumer, averaged 18.5 million barrels a day in the four weeks ended April 17, down 6.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the department.
Nippon Oil Corp., Japanâ€™s largest refiner, will cut fuel production by about 6 percent next month from year-earlier levels as the recession in Japan weakens petroleum demand, the company said today.
OPEC will load about 22.27 million barrels a day in the four weeks ending May 9, down 0.6 percent from 22.4 million a day in the month ended April 11, Oil Movements said. In the month to May 2, it cut by 2.5 percent.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, producer of about 40 percent of the worldâ€™s oil, has completed about 80 percent of the 4.2 million barrels of daily production cuts it announced last year to take affect in 2009, according to Oil Movements. That compliance rate is unchanged from the last four reports, indicating that OPEC is not getting closer to its target. The groupâ€™s shipments are at a five-year low.
Crude oil may decline next week on speculation that U.S. inventories will increase because the recession has cut consumption.
Sixteen of 35 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News, or 46 percent, said futures will fall through May 1. Eleven respondents, or 31 percent, forecast that oil prices will be little changed and eight said the market will rise. Last week, 52 percent of analysts expected prices to be little changed.
Brent crude oil for June settlement was at $49.69 a barrel, down 42 cents, 1:17 p.m. Singapore time on Londonâ€™s ICE Futures Europe exchange.