Crude oil futures in New York, after passing US$49 a barrel, may rise further next week on increasing concern that shipments will be curtailed just as demand accelerates, a Bloomberg survey of traders and analysts showed.
Thirty-two of 51 respondents, or 63 percent, predicted the price rally will continue next week. Twelve expected prices to fall and seven said oil will be little changed. New York crude oil for September delivery closed at US$47.86 a barrel after rising to a record US$49.40 in morning trading.
PHOTO: AFP
OPEC, the producer of a third of the world's oil, is pumping at the highest rate since 1979, close to full capacity, to prevent shortages.
"The funds are really putting huge amounts of money" into the market in anticipation of higher prices, said Sheikh Zaki Yamani, the former Saudi oil minister, in a telephone interview from Sardinia, Italy. "There are some political factors no one can do anything about" to resolve conflicts in Iraq, Russia and Venezuela that would ease oil prices, he said.
The International Energy Agency, adviser to 26 industrialized nations, this month raised its projections of 2004 oil demand by 0.9 percent to 82.2 million barrels a day. Fuel use will jump 2.5 million barrels a day, or 3.1 percent, the Paris- based agency said.
Bloomberg each Thursday surveys oil traders from Tokyo to Houston on their view of whether prices in the next week will rise, fall or stay little changed. Last week, 57 percent of respondents had forecast a price increase.
Rising Prices
World oil output as of the second quarter of this year was 82.3 million barrels a day, according to the IEA.
Prices have surged more than 50 percent in the past year on concern exports from Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela may be disrupted.
Oil futures rose 4.6 percent in the week through Thursday, climbing above US$49 a barrel for the first time since trading began on the New York Mercantile Exchange in 1983. Oil prices are headed for their eighth straight weekly gain, the longest such stretch in 14 years.
"Right now, only signs of slowing global demand seem capable of reversing the rising price trend," said Dariusz Kowalczyk, the senior investment strategist at CFC Securities Ltd in Hong Kong.
A two-week rebellion in Iraq by followers of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has lowered the country's oil production. Sabotage of pipelines in southern Iraq has cut exports to about 1 million barrels a day from 1.8 million in April.
Sabotage
Offices and warehouses belonging to Iraq's South Oil Co were set on fire yesterday by people whom witnesses described as Shiite militants, the Associated Press reported from Basra.
South Oil operates pipelines and terminals for exports through the Persian Gulf.
In Russia, Yukos, the country's biggest oil exporter, said it may be bankrupted by government demands that it pay a US$3.4 billion tax bill. Yukos pumps about 1.6 million barrels of oil a day, as much as OPEC member Libya.
Oil fell Monday, the only decline this week, after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's victory in a weekend referendum vote eased concern of export disruptions from the fourth-largest oil supplier to the US.
``The market is definitely gripped by Yukos, Venezuela, although less now after Chavez seems to have survived the vote, and Iraq,'' said Antonio Szabo, chief executive of Houston-based consultant Stone Bond Technologies LP.
Last week, Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi sought to calm concern about a lack of supply, saying the kingdom has 1.3 million barrels a day of spare production ready for use. Al-Naimi's statement was discounted by traders and prices rallied amid strife in Iraq. The extra barrels Saudi Arabia is offering are less-desirable heavy crude oil.
Losing Grip
"World price-setting ability appears to have slipped from Saudi oil minister al-Naimi to al-Sadr" in Iraq, Szabo said.
Prices surged in May and June on concern about Saudi Arabian supplies after attacks on foreign workers who help run the nation's oil industry. About 100,000 Westerners are employed in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia is the world's biggest oil exporter. The al-Qaeda terrorist network said it was behind some attacks in the kingdom.
"I can't imagine that the current tightness in the market has escaped the attention of al-Qaeda," said Chuck Hackett, a broker and analyst at Access Futures & Options Trading, a commodity futures brokerage in Woodlake, California.
"There can be little doubt that they are doing whatever they can to put together something that will hit some kind of oil jugular somewhere."
Dissenting Views
`There's too much hype in the oil market,'' said George Gaspar, an energy analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co in Milwaukee.
"Unless there is an outage beyond Iraq's export slowdown, oil supply is building. OPEC's higher September output target and non-OPEC supply recovery and growth should help put some added crude supply in the market."
US crude oil and petroleum product supplies exceed year-ago levels. Oil inventories of 293 million barrels last week were 5.1 percent higher than a year earlier, according to an Energy Department report.
"Prices are more than 50 percent higher than a year ago with inventories that are above last year's level," said Tim Evans, a senior energy analyst for IFR Markets in New York.
"This is a bubble that may float somewhat higher, but is already running a grave risk of collapse. The reversal may arrive without warning."
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