Oil prices at one-month low
January 25, 2010 |11:17 | Oil By : Team X
Crude oil traded near a one-month low yesterday as sliding equity markets and expectations of interest-rate increases in China dented investor confidence in the strength of the global economic recovery. OPEC nations must improve their compliance with the group’s output quotas to prevent further pressure on oil prices, Shokri Ghanem, chairman of Libya’s National Oil Corp., said yesterday. “We’ve seen a pretty significant turn in macro sentiment,’’ said Toby Hassall, commodity analyst at CWA Global Markets in Sydney.
Oil “was very much a forward-looking market last year pricing in a recovery. We’ve seen some encouraging signs, and the US certainly is looking a lot better than it was 12 months ago, but that’s a different thing to a material recovery.’’
Crude oil for March delivery fell as much as 43 cents, or 0.6 percent, to $74.11 a barrel in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The contract dropped 2 percent to $74.54 a barrel on Jan. 22, the lowest since Dec. 22. Prices slumped 4.9 percent last week as US gasoline stockpiles reached a 22-month high, equities tumbled with news of President Obama’s bank plans, and investors fretted that China will slow growth in the world’s second-largest energy consumer.
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