Oil prices slashed below US$62 a barrel in Asian trading amid weak crude demand, as light sweet crude for June delivery dropped 26 cents to US$61.67 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange in Singapore.
Market of crude oil is falling continuously, as it is not showing any signs of recovering any time soon, so traders have closed longs. On the close of the last week trading, the contract dipped US$1.26 to settle at US$61.93 a barrel.
Tobin Gorey, a commodity strategist with Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney
It looks like a continuation, a reaction here in Asia, of the very sharp dip in the U.S. Its taken quite a sharp fall on the open of U.S. trade and quite a few people haven’t quite caught up yet
Analysts were worrying about a shortfall in U.S. gasoline supplies ahead of peak summer demand and suspecting that refineries will not be producing enough gasoline by then to meet demand and it will be a pressure point for the market.
The market is also affected by the rampant corruption and violent crime in the world’s eighth-largest oil exporter Nigeria. Foreign worker are leaving the country to save their life, as 95 foreign workers have been kidnapped from Nigeria’s oil-rich southern region.
In the Nymex trading on Monday morning, heating oil futures lost 0.55 cent to US$1.8254 a gallon (3.8 liters) while natural gas prices fell 12.3 cents to US$7.815 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Image: express.howstuffworks
Via: iht
