Adding to investor nervousness that followed the attacks on Paris earlier this month, Turkey shot down a Russian aircraft near the Syrian border on Tuesday, saying the jet had violated its air space.
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President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Turkey did not want any escalation of tension over the downing of the Russian warplane, and that it had acted simply to defend its own security and the “rights of our brothers” in Syria.
Hedge funds are expecting that Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which meets in Vienna next week, will choose to stick with its policy of keeping oil output high and targeting higher-cost producers by increasing supply.
The world continues to be awash in crude oil ahead of the OPEC meeting December 4, raising the possibility that prices could again dip below $40 a barrel.
West Texas Intermediate for January delivery dropped $1.08, or 2.5 percent, to $41.96 a barrel at 11:45 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
ANZ said in a note on Friday that “US stocks data did little to excite the market”, referring to numbers from the Energy Information Administration on Wednesday which showed United States crude inventories rose 1 million barrels last week, slightly below analyst expectations.
“We highly value our interaction within consultations on the situation in the oil market between OPEC and leading non-OPEC producers”, Novak said.
“Low volume holiday trade, largely off on strong dollar and hard sell-off in Chinese equity markets”, Jim Ritterbusch of Chicago-based oil consultancy Ritterbusch & Associates said in a commentary on oil.
Saudi Arabia is cleraly under pressure from competitors like Russian Federation and Iran.
The increase for a ninth straight week kept supplies more than 100 million barrels above the five-year seasonal average and further confirmed the supply glut that has depressed prices for over a year. “Crude and product inventories are building in the US with the market expected to remain oversupplied through the first half of 2016”.
Barclays thinks that although OPEC had chose to not reduce its production levels in November 2014, global oil demand growth actually tripled to nearly 2.1 million barrels a day during the same time. COMEX silver was up 1.45% or 20 cents to $14.27 an ounce, but spot platinum was down 0.42% or $3.57 at $841.68 an ounce.
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Jenny W. Hsu contributed to this article.
