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Oil prices hover over 47% amid OPEC meeting

13 March 2009 07:49 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Vahab Rzayev â€“ APA-Economics. Crude oil traded near $47 a barrel, set for a fourth week of gains, as OPEC prepares to meet this weekend to consider a cut in output.
The global oil market is oversupplied and OPEC will lower production if needed, Shokri Ghanem, who chairs Libyaâ€™s state-run National Oil Corp., said yesterday. Other ministers have called for the group to halt reductions. U.S. crude stockpiles rose last week amid a 3.5 percent drop in demand, the Energy Department reported on March 11. Crude oil for April delivery was at $46.66 a barrel, down 37 cents, at 12:53 p.m. Singapore time on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Yesterday, futures rose $4.70, or 11 percent, to $47.03 a barrel, the most since Feb. 19. Prices have risen 4.6 percent this year and gained 2.5 percent this week.
Futures dropped 7.4 percent on March 11 after the U.S. government report showed a bigger-than-expected inventory gain. Daily crude-oil price swings are widening. Futures fell or rose by 4 percent or more on 24 trading days since the beginning of the year, compared with three days in the same period last year, according to data complied by Bloomberg.
Brent crude oil for April settlement was at $44.71 a barrel, down 38 cents, on Londonâ€™s ICE Futures Europe exchange at 12:27 p.m. Singapore time. The contract gained $3.69, or 8.9 percent, to end the session at $45.09 a barrel yesterday.
OPEC has reduced daily output targets by 4.2 million barrels since September. Ministers will meet in Vienna on March 15 to discuss whether to make further cuts.
OPEC will cut crude oil shipments by 1.5 percent in the four weeks ended March 28 as producers try to adhere to targets set last year, according to tanker-tracker Oil Movements.
The group will load 22.76 million barrels a day in the four weeks ended March 28, down 1.5 percent from 23.11 million a day in the month ended Feb. 28, Oil Movements said yesterday in a report. That would be the lowest volume since January 2004.