Azernews.Az

By Rashid Shirinov

World oil prices recorded a fall on August 22, on the background of analysts' skeptical views regarding the upcoming meeting of oil exporting countries. They predicted that Brent oil will soon fall below $50 a barrel.

Price of Brent crude’s October futures decreased by 1.5 percent – to $50.1 a barrel. In the meantime, contracts for WTI oil for September at electronic trading of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) have fallen in price by 1.3 percent – to $47.88 per barrel, Interfax reported.

As for Azerbaijani oil, for the last week, the average price of Azeri Light oil, produced at the block of fields “Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli”, was $50.4 per barrel.

Maximum last-week price for Azeri Light was $51.47 per barrel, while the minimum was at $48.97 a barrel.

Market participants also drew attention to the rapid growth of export of oil products from China that may be a sign of continuing oversupply in the market. Export of diesel fuel and gasoline in July rose by 181.8 and 145.2 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, Iraq has announced plans to increase oil exports by 5 percent in the next few days, due to the agreement on the resumption of supply from Kirkuk fields.

Additionally, American companies announced about the increased number of working oil rigs.

Theodore, many experts believe that hopes for limitation of oil output by oil-producing countries after the September negotiations are quite exaggerated.

The OPEC members aim to meet in Algiers on September 26-28. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the possibility of freezing of oil production to curb overproduction. Previous meetings were not successful due to disagreements between major oil producers.

Morgan Stanley announced that the agreement is extremely unlikely, because there are many logistical problems in this issue and also strong disagreements between the exporters.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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