Azernews.Az

By Fatma Babayeva

Oil prices experience slight fluctuations these days standing at around $50 per barrel.

Cost of July futures of WTI crude in New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) increased by 0.93 percent to $49.07 per barrel on June 6. Prices of August futures of Brent benchmark went up to $50.10 per barrel in London ICE which is 0.93 percent increase compared to the previous day as well, according to Bloomberg Energy.

Meanwhile, price of the Azeri LT CIF produced at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of oil and gas fields stood at $49.83 per barrel on June 4, Azertac reported.

A day after Vienna meeting, OPEC’s oil basket cost $45.73 on June 3 which was $0.15 increase, according the organization’s official website.

The recent recovery in oil prices is due to supply disruptions in some oil producing countries like Nigeria, Canada and Venezuela, which also offset Iran’s growing oil exports.

The price of oil in the near future will depend on how much oil comes back to the market, experts say.

Meanwhile, a number of oil rigs return to work in the U.S as oil prices surged to $50, which also raises concerns about recovery of the market.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts the U.S. shale production to average 8.6 million barrels a day in 2016 compared to 9.4 million a day in 2015.

In May, IEA increased its forecasts for global oil demand by 100,000 barrels a day to 95.9 million barrels a day. The supply will exceed demand by an average of 1.3 million barrels a day in the first half of this year, according to the IEA.

In the meantime, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company cut oil prices for Europe on June 5, as competition gets fiercer after OPEC's Vienna meeting failed to set a production ceiling on the oil output, and Iran’s oil exports keep ramping up, reported the Wall Street Journal.

Iran, which resumed oil exports to Europe in February, was able to bring its production level up to 400,000 barrels a day to the old continent.

Price of Saudi oil declined 35 cents per barrel for north-western Europe, whilst 10 cents for the Mediterranean region.

However, Saudis lifted price of Arab Light crude for the U.S. by 10 cents a barrel, and for the Far East by 35 cents.

Wall Street Journal expects that oil prices will go up during the second half of the current year.

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Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

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