Crude oil fell as much as 10 percent, its biggest one-day drop since September 2001, on speculation a war in Iraq will end quickly and with limited disruption to Middle East oil supplies.
US President George W. Bush yesterday gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to go into exile or face attack. All UN arms inspectors in Iraq left today, UN spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.
"The market consensus is for a short, straightforward war," said Steve Turner, an analyst at Commerzbank Securities in London. "The market is anticipating an improvement in supply, be it from the Saudis or from the release of strategic stockpiles."
Brent crude oil for May settlement fell as much as US$3.08 to a three-month low of US$26.40 a barrel on London's International Petroleum Exchange, the largest drop since a 13 percent slide on Sept. 24, 2001. Prices were down US$1.90 at US$27.58 at 11:43am.
Selling accelerated as prices fell past levels monitored by traders who base their decisions on price charts.
"It's been a domino effect," said Rob Laughlin, a director of energy broker GNI Ltd in London. "We saw funds go through big sell stops and heavy technical selling."
Saudi Arabia's state oil company booked at least eight 2 million-barrel tankers to haul more than 2.2 million tons of crude oil to the US, arriving from May onward, shipbrokers reported last week, a sign that the country is fulfilling its promise to make up for any shortfall from an Iraq conflict.
Saudi Arabia is expected to boost crude oil production to 9.4 million barrels a day by the end of March, up 200,000 barrels a day from February's average, according to the Middle East Economic Survey. Exports from Iraq through a UN-controlled program averaged 1.4 million barrels a day in the week ended March 7, the UN said. US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has pledged to tap the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to cover supply disruptions.
The reserve stands at 600 million barrels, equal to about 272 days of US imports from the Persian Gulf, based on the average during the past year.
New York oil prices peaked at US$41.15 a barrel in October 1990 after Iraq invaded Kuwait.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) market value closed above US$1 trillion for the first time in Taipei last week, with a raised sales forecast driven by robust artificial intelligence (AI) demand. TSMC saw its Taiwanese shares climb to a record high on Friday, a near 50 percent rise from an April low. That has made it the first Asian stock worth more than US$1 trillion, since PetroChina Co (中國石油天然氣) briefly reached the milestone in 2007. As investors turned calm after their aggressive buying on Friday, amid optimism over the chipmaker’s business outlook, TSMC lost 0.43 percent to close at NT$1,150
RSS