Oil prices exceed $47 a barrel
By Fatma Babayeva
Global oil prices experienced strong growth on April 28-29. The price of mostly-used Brent benchmark oil surged to its record-highs since November 2015.
The cost for June futures of North Sea petroleum mix stood at $47.52 and $48.11 per barrel respectively on April 28 and 29.
Earlier some energy experts said that failure to put a cap on oil output of the top petroleum producing countries in Doha would impact oil prices negatively. However, it was forecasted by a number of highly rated international agencies that oil prices will raise to $50-$60 during 2016.
The price of Azeri Light crude amounted to $4.09 per barrel by rising $1.53 in the oil markets on April 29.
Oil basket of OPEC also increased by 3.76 percent on April 27 and stood at $41.38 per barrel which $1.5 more compared to the day before.
What’s more, Russia is also getting ambitious to realize its decade old dream to create its own benchmark priced in Spimex, thus the Russian oil will be priced in Russia, reported Bloomberg on April 28. Russia exports about half its crude and is not happy with the discounted price for low quality of Ural oil against North Sea Brent price.
Bloomberg further highlights that the goal is to increase revenues from Urals crude by disconnecting the price-setting mechanism from Brent benchmark.
In addition, Spimex has been Russia’s largest commodities exchange and oil trading platform since 2008 after the government obliged companies to sell from 5 and 10 percent of their domestically produced oil there.
The next decisive event in the global oil market is expected to be next OPEC meeting in June where the member-states will re-discuss issues relating to setting the cartel’s quota and freezing production.
The future of oil market is unclear for now. Some even hypothesize that the end of the oil era has came.
Oil, as commodity, is affected by many factors including both economic and political. Speed of the growth in Asian oil demand, stagnation in shale oil production in U.S., possible increase of Iran’s oil production and so on are among the factors that will decide the future of the global oil prices.
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Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva
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