Word: oil
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...During the oil markets' wild ride last year, prices hit an all-time high of $147 a barrel in July before crashing to slightly more than $30 a barrel in December. Now oil futures hover around $70 a barrel - a price that is, finally, just right, according to Ali Al-Naimi, oil minister from Saudi Arabia, which produces about one-third of all OPEC oil. "The market is in very good shape," he told Reuters when he arrived in Vienna on Wednesday, Sept. 9. (See pictures of South Africa's oil-from-coal refinery...
...holding prices steady might be OPEC's toughest act yet. Oil analysts list a few key factors that OPEC leaders will find all but impossible to control and that could complicate efforts by the U.S. and Europe to kick-start a global economic recovery...
...OPEC's Bad Boys In theory, 11 of OPEC's 12 members are obligated to follow production quotas, including the sharp cuts voted on last December, which helped to double world oil prices within a few months (only Iraq is exempted, because of the war there). OPEC quotas are crucial to propping up world oil prices; without them, oil futures would currently trade at between $25 and $30 a bbl., according to Edward Morse, head of economic research at Lewis Capital Markets in New York. But in reality, some OPEC leaders simply ignore their quotas, because they need every penny...
...Russia OPEC has no control over one very important energy powerhouse: Russia. Russia's Energy Ministry reported this week that for the first time, the country's exports (about 7.4 million bbl. a day) outstripped those from Saudi Arabia, which has the world's biggest oil reserves. Saudi Arabia cut its production last year in order to prop up world oil prices and is easily the bigger potential oil producer. But oil analysts say that by ignoring OPEC's calls for production cuts, Russia has shown OPEC how little power it wields over non-OPEC producers. Although Russian officials told...
...Recession or Recovery? In a major report on oil demand this week, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which monitors global oil markets, said the world would use about 900,000 more bbl. of oil a day next year than this year and by 2012 would fully recover to its 2007 prerecession levels. OPEC is also betting on a fast global recovery. Angola's oil minister, José Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos, the current rotating OPEC head, told the meeting attendees in Vienna on Wednesday that "the darkest days of financial turmoil and economic recession are behind us." That belief...