Oil Price Topples To $49 Per Barrel As Iraq Spikes Export

Oil price slid lower toward $49 a barrel on Monday, May 30, as Iraq raised its crude exports target ahead of an OPEC meeting.

With the OPEC unable to agree on an output freeze in an effort to support prices, Iraq was the latest Middle East producer to raise its export quota ahead of the meeting, supplying 5 million barrels of extra crude to its partners in June.

Canadian production was set to restart after huge wildfires.

Most analysts do not expect any changes in’s production even as attention remains on a meeting of the the cartel is set to hold in Vienna, Thursday, June 2.

“Iraq plans to discuss freezing oil production, but Iran and Saudi Arabia are unlikely to be ready to take any such step.”
Brent crude futures LCOc1 were at $49.27, a barrel, at 1222 GMT (8:22am ET), down 5 cents, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 was down 6 cents at $49.27.

Vienna-based consultancy, JBC Energy, said that global oil demand between January and April rose by 1.5 million barrels, per day, from a year earlier.

Outages because of wildfires in Canada and unrest in Libya and Nigeria had helped to push oil prices to a seven-month high in recent weeks.

 

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