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WORLD> America
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Oil at 3-month low on weak US economic outlook
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-08-06 15:58 MEASURED FALL "Prices will remain on the downward trend but I don't think they will fall that much, but be rangebound around $118-$120 a barrel," Rigby said. This was because geopolitics, which continued to pose a threat to oil supplies, and demand in India and China, could counter the bearish impact, he added. New supply fears have also emerged after a blast on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline on Tuesday night in eastern Turkey, prompting authorities to halt oil flows along the pipeline, whose capacity was set to rise to 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, state-run Anatolian news agency said. Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer, delivered a letter to world powers on Tuesday but gave no concrete reply to a demand to freeze its nuclear activity, a defiant step the United States has warned could lead to more sanctions. Tehran says it is only seeking to master nuclear technology to generate electricity and has repeatedly refused to halt its atomic work, prompting the UN Security Council to impose three rounds of penalties on Iran since 2006. In Nigeria, the world's eighth-largest oil exporter, militant attacks and security concerns in the Niger Delta were causing the country to lose an average of 650,000 barrels of crude production per day. The Paris-based International Energy Agency says consumption, which remains strong in emerging countries, will push oil demand higher this year, despite the global slowdown, leaving supplies as its main worry. "Our biggest worries are Nigeria, the hurricane season, etc ... We cannot relax too much. There is very robust demand in China, India and the Middle East," Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the IEA, adviser to 27 industrialised countries, told Reuters on Tuesday The IEA expects oil demand to grow this year by 890,000 bpd, its latest monthly oil report shows. |
