OPEC reduces oil exports as demand declinesFriday, February 25, 2011
Sherry Su
Bloomberg News
LONDON: The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will ship less crude this month because of declining demand for winter fuels and as refineries halt for maintenance, according to tanker-tracker Oil Movements.
Loadings will slip to 23.88 million barrels a day in the four weeks to March 12, down 1.3 percent from 24.19 million a day in the equivalent period to Feb. 12, the tanker-tracker said Thursday. Data exclude Angola and Ecuador.
“We are moving into a quarter of lower consumption” and refinery maintenance, Roy Mason, the founder of Oil Movements, said by phone from Halifax, England. Falling loadings at this time of year are “quite normal,” he said.
Oil climbed to the highest in 30 months in London as Libya’s violent uprising reduced supplies from Africa’s third- biggest producer.
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http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article....#ixzz1F6g8Guk4 5 Dollar Gas? Get Ready To Pay An Arm And A Leg For Gasoline http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/a...g-for-gasoline One of the quickest ways to bring down the U.S. economy would be to dramatically increase the price of oil. Oil is the lifeblood of our economic system. Without it, our entire economy would come to a grinding halt. Almost every type of economic activity in this country depends on oil, and even a small rise in the price of oil can have a dramatic impact on economic growth. That is why so many economists are incredibly alarmed about what is happening in the Middle East right now. The revolution in Libya caused the price of WTI crude to soar more than 7 dollars on Tuesday alone. It closed at $93.57 on Tuesday and Brent crude actually hit $108.57 a barrel before settling back to $105.78 at the end of the day. Some analysts are warning that we could even see 5 dollar gas in the United States by the end of the year if rioting spreads to other oil producing nations such as Saudi Arabia. With the Middle East in such a state of chaos right now it is hard to know exactly what is going to happen, but almost everyone agrees that if oil prices continue to rise at a rapid pace over the next several months it is going to have a devastating impact on economic growth all over the globe.
Right now the eyes of the world are on Libya. Libya is the 17th largest oil producer on the globe and it has the biggest proven oil reserves on the continent of Africa.
Libya only produces 2 percent of the oil in the world, but with global supplies so tight at the moment even a minor production disruption can have a dramatic impact on the price of oil.
