Worried About Economic Slowdown, Oil Prices Fell Sharply

New York crude oil futures continued to plummet after its biggest one-day decline in 17 years, amid fears that the US slowdown will weaken demand for crude oil.

International oil prices continued to fall yesterday after New York crude oil futures fell sharply on Tuesday.

As of 16:30 Beijing time yesterday, the New York futures exchange's August crude oil futures quotas fell by 1.57 US dollars to $137.17 a barrel, or 1.13%.

On the 15 day, it dropped $9.26 to $135.92 a barrel, closing at $138.74, or 4.4%, the biggest decline since January 17, 1991.

Fears of deepening economic crisis in the us make market participants expect a sharp drop in oil demand.

So far, oil demand in the United States has fallen by 2.6% this year. As oil prices remain high and the economy is weak, the market expects us oil demand to continue to decline.

If the US economy falls into recession, or even worse, it will have an impact on the global economy, which is also the market's concern.

An analyst at Mitsubishi Co said.

In addition, under the influence of slowing economic growth and strengthening energy saving measures, the organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) also lowered its expectations for global oil demand on the 15 th, indicating that the organization may not need to increase oil production by the end of the year.

At present, 40% of the world's daily consumption of oil comes from OPEC members.

"Influenced by factors such as the growth of non-traditional oil and liquefied natural gas production and the strengthening of energy conservation measures in oil consuming countries under high energy prices, it is estimated that the global demand for OPEC oil will drop by about 700 thousand barrels next year, the largest decline since 2002."

OPEC said.

OPEC is expected to cut its global oil day demand by 100 thousand barrels in 2008, and expects oil consumption growth in 2009 to be 10% lower than this year.

Russia's non OPEC oil producing countries are expected to increase by 900 thousand barrels per day next year, but are expected to be completely digested by consumers.

OPEC said that oil inventories could increase significantly in 2009, far exceeding the amount needed to make up for the oil supply of non OPEC oil producing countries.

Most of the oil inventories are currently at an appropriate level in the five year average range, but some analysts say the rise in inventory levels is expected to ease the market's strong concern about the historical low level of global remaining oil production.

Although OPEC refused to increase production again, according to the latest survey of OPEC and oil industry officials released yesterday by Prof energy information, OPEC's 13 member countries produced an average of 32 million 470 thousand barrels of crude oil per day in June, an increase of 230 thousand barrels compared with 32 million 240 thousand barrels in May.

The increase in oil from Saudi Arabia is almost the same as all incremental increments.

The survey showed that, in addition to Iraq, the average daily output of 12 member countries bound by the OPEC production agreement in June was 29 million 980 thousand barrels, an increase of 29 million 750 thousand barrels from May, and 307 thousand barrels more than that of 29 million 673 thousand barrels per day.

Saudi Arabia's average daily output was 9 million 450 thousand barrels, an increase of 210 thousand barrels from last month.

The only drop in crude oil daily output is Nigeria.

The daily output of the country dropped by 60 thousand barrels to 1 million 800 thousand barrels in June as militants disrupted operations.