Oil prices fall
Monday, January 8th, 2007Oil prices have fallen again due to wild Winter weather in the US and Europe. A conflict between Belarus and Russia, and a proposed cut in oil production by OPEC, did cause prices to rise slightly before dropping. The European Union does not expect shortages in Europe due to the Russia-Belarus situation.
But the rally failed to take hold, and prices began retracing their weather-driven drop. Although forecasters say U.S. temperatures should return to normal over the next couple weeks, it won’t be enough to make up for the recent historically warm weather. U.S. supplies of crude and heating oil are above normal for this time of year, according to last week’s data from the U.S. Energy Department.
“If you were walking around anywhere in the Northeast this weekend, people were in shorts — it was like a summer day. Obviously, that’s been the story: the winter that was not,” said Tom Bentz, analyst at BNP Paribas Commodity Futures in New York. “There are some reports of a little colder weather in the forecast, but I don’t think that’s much of an issue. We’ve gone this far without anything, so there are no worries about supply.”
Source : Yahoo! Finance