Oil Prices Increase in New Year Holidays

Oil gradually gained in price in the period from Dec. 26, 2008 to Jan. 6, 2009.

Brent futures for February picked up by 32% and reached the level of $50.53 per barrel. WTI surged by 28% to the level of $48.6.

Russian Urals gained even more in price, it jumped by 50% and the top price was $47.9 per barrel.

But the following three days brought another price decrease. Brent crude declined by 12% to $44.42, WTI - by 16% to $40.83 and Urals - by 14% to $41.43.

Among the obvious reasons for oil price growth the analytics pointed out the cruel winter in Europe, the Russia-Ukraine gas conflict which gave impulse for LNG demand, and the war in Palestine.

One of the experts, Alexander Ershov, Thompson Reuters analytic, made his predictions on the future of oil prices fluctuations. In his opinion world oil price on average will balance at the point of $50 per barrel.

Oil price rebound in January might have been caused by OPEC output cut in December which was estimated by Bloomberg as 27.1 mln. barrels per day. From Jan. 1, 2009 oil supplies were decreased further down to 24.845 mln. barrels per day.

Author: Ksenia Kochneva