New Delhi: As the global oil slide continued, the Indian basket of crude oils closed trade on Tuesday at a 13-year low of $27.33 a barrel, according to official data released here on Wednesday.
The Indian basket had touched a previous monthly low of $27.11 in December 2002.
Also marking a 13-year low, the price of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries(OPEC) basket of twelve crudes fell over a dollar overnight and stood at $25.76 a barrel on Tuesday, compared to $27.07 on Monday, the organisation’s secretariat said.
Analysts like Barclays, Macquarie, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, Societe Generale and Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) all cut their oil price forecasts for this year earlier this week, with the latter saying that prices could fall to as low as $10 a barrel.
With OPEC deciding last December against cutting output, traders are betting the cartel is less likely to cut output now.
Adding to investors’ worries was the lack of signs that US shale oil producers would start to cut production in face of the plunging prices.
Analysts aver that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries are not going to cut back on production to make room for Iran coming back into the market following its nuclear deal last year with the world powers.
Meanwhile, the Iranian oil ministry’s news agency Shana said on Wednesday that Iran has not received any request for an OPEC emergency meeting, citing Iran’s Petroleum Minister Bijan Zanganeh in the matter.
Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu was reported on Tuesday to have said at an energy conference in Abu Dhabi that a couple of OPEC members have requested emergency meeting of the organisation.
He said current market conditions create the need to hold such a meeting.
