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SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Oil prices tumbled on Wednesday to extend losses from the previous session, as markets are well supplied against rising production and US sanctions exemptions that allow more oil Iran's big customers continue to buy crude.
PHOTO FILE – Iraqi villagers drive their fishing boat in front of oil tanker Al-Baath in the Shat-al-Arab waterway, which leads to the port of Umm Qasr, near the country's second largest city, Basra, February 10, 2005 REUTERS / Atef Hassan
The United States West Texas Intermediate (WTI) CLc1 crude oil futures price was $ 61.79 per barrel at 00:53 GMT, down 42 cents or 0.7% from their latest settlement .
The Brent international benchmark was not yet traded.
The market, which is increasingly well stocked, has transformed the sentiment that, until early October, was largely bullish, pushing Brent to an unprecedented high of more than 86 dollars a barrel for four years, before the sanctions imposed by Iran.
Brent and WTI lost 17.4% and 19.7% respectively of their value since their most recent highs in early October.
Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at Forex.com, has become "pretty bearish on oil prices."
Razaqzada pointed to declining demand growth forecasts, increasing supply and lifting Iran's sanctions to most of its major buyers, which would allow its exports of gross "to stay around their current levels for a few more months".
US bank Morgan Stanley said that "the fundamentals of the oil market have eased (as (s)) stocks still higher than expected, especially those of the OPEC of the United States, the Middle East , from Russia and Libya ".
Production of the world's top three producers, Russia, the United States and Saudi Arabia, crossed the 33-million-barrel-a-day mark for the first time in October, meaning that these three countries accounted for they alone more than a third of nearly 100 million bpd of global consumption.
GRAPHIC: Production of Crude Oil from Russia, United States and Saudi Arabia – tmsnrt.rs/2CTwqaq
Iraq, the second largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) behind Saudi Arabia, is targeting a production capacity of 5 million bpd in 2019, compared to 4.6 million bpd currently, said Tuesday the Minister of Petroleum, Thamer Ghadhban.
"The market is well stocked and we expect a balanced rather than a small market. That's no longer our forecast of $ 85 a barrel and our forecast for the first half of 1985, "said Morgan Stanley.
Instead, the bank said it expects Brent to average about $ 77.5 a barrel by mid-2019.
With the increase in production, crude stocks are also growing.
US inventories of crude rose 7.8 million barrels during the week ending Nov. 2 to 432 million, Tuesday revealed data from the American Petroleum Institute industrial group.
Despite the increasingly well-stocked market, Razaqzada warned that it was becoming increasingly "expensive for inefficient producers to maintain production at current levels."
Venezuela's gross output was in "free fall" and may soon fall below one million barrels per day, International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol warned Tuesday against more than $ 2 million. barrels per year on average.
Report by Henning Gloystein; Edited by Joseph Radford
