“Jamaica imports all the crude and petroleum products that it consumes and is, therefore, exposed to oil price volatility”, he said in an emailed responses to Gleaner Business queries. The January contract expired Tuesday after adding 11 cents to $52.23 a barrel.
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Goldman Sachs, which is predicting a bullish year for commodities, sees West Texas Intermediate Crude at $US57.50 a barrel in the second quarter of 2017 dipping to $US55 in the second half of the year. February Brent crude LCOG7, +0.54% on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose 16 cents, or 0.3%, $55.51 a barrel.
Now the OPEC/NON-OPEC deal to cut global supply – if producers stick to promised cuts – would give the Saudis some respite for their heavily-oil-dependent economy.
Allison Holland, IMF mission chief in Oman, said the OPEC deal would help reduce excess supply in the market, and has already resulted in a significant increase in oil prices which could boost revenue for Oman.
“The murder of this Turkish diplomat is raising concerns about political risk”, Flynn said. Many traders will be packing up for vacation the nearer we get to the weekend, leading to thin trading volumes.
The report comes amid growing optimism in markets which saw slight gains in the last three sessions that were marked by thin trading ahead of the Christmas holidays.
Lower trading activity tends to increase the prospect of big prices swings, especially around the weekly USA crude inventory reports on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The cartel will meet up with non-OPEC members in the Austrian city of Vienna to discuss the barrels/day production of crude (which it is thinking of cutting down to 600,000 barrels/day) for the non-members.
This voluntary adjustment, taking into consideration prevailing market conditions and prospects, is expected to involve up to 20,000 barrels per day of crude oil from the country’s 2016 average production, said the company.
If imports stay steady coming into the USA, it could delay price gains for weeks, he added. A month-long rally probably also convinced some traders to finally dump their oil, said Sam Margolin, an analyst at Cowen & Co.
“The scale of the cuts that OPEC have agreed to will far outweigh any potential increase in USA output”, he said.
February futures rose as much as 0.9 percent in NY after climbing 0.5 percent on Tuesday.
A stronger USA dollar pressures demand for dollar-denominated crude as it makes barrels more expensive for users of other currencies. US crude oil added to overnight gains of 9 percent to reach $50.00 a barrel for the first time since October.
The contract was informed by a trend that saw crude oil prices dip from more than US$100 a barrel in 2014 to below US$50 a barrel, with the Jamaican authorities anticipating that it might have climbed back to US$75-US$80 per barrel on the world market during the course of past year. The inventories drew by 4.15 million barrels as opposed to expectations of 2.5 million barrel draw. This confidence also meant the bank advised some caution. The cut will be implemented from January 2017, Petronas said in a statement on Wednesday (Dec 21). Diesel futures lost 0.2 cent, or 0.01%, to $1.6688 a gallon.
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Oil has been center stage since late 2014.
