Oil prices are now going down again after rallying close to 60 dollars per barrels. Again, the prices failed to touch the $60 threshold. Brent oil lost 2,5% in 24 hours. NordFX reports that Brent futures for December delivery were trading around $58,53/b on Wednesday. On Thursday, the price dropped down to $57,03/b, which was the lowest price level since the end of the previous trading week. WTI oil went down in price as well. On Thursday, the price dropped down to 51,74 per barrel.
At the same time, international experts believe that oil prices are going to continue their downtrend in the near future. Some of they say that the recent efforts made by oil prices to set new 24-month highs were fueled by the fears that after the independence referendum in Kurdistan, the oil export from Northern Iraq would probably shrink. For those of you who don’t know, the region produces 600K b/d.
However, later last week, the Iraqi army gained control over the vast territory in the Kirkouk province, including the area with the main oilfields of the region. According to Sky News Arabia, the Kurds may lose up to 40% of the claimed territories free of terrorists. If that’s the case, they will get their borders back to those seen in 2003, which also deprives them of the biggest oilfields. Under such circumstances, Turkey is probably not going to shot down their pipelines (they threatened to do so after Iraq gained control over the oilfields). That said, the Kurdish factor hasn’t had any considerable impact on the situation.
On the other hand, the global market is entering the season of low demand. The auto season in the U.S. is about to be over as many oil refineries are going for the planned maintenance of their facilities, and that’s why they are reducing their demand for oil. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Energy reports that last week’s hurricane made the domestic production of crude oil drop all the way down to the lowest level in 5 years. However, despite all of that, the U.S. inventories of gasoline grew by 900K barrels last week.
