ISLAMABAD: After a long spell of over five months of very high oil prices, the OPEC crude oil price have crashed today, falling below $103 per barrel in the international market.
For the past many weeks, the OPEC crude oil price was fluctuating between $119 to $115 a barrel after touching $126/barrel highest mark.
Like OPEC, the Brent crude oil price in the international market had already fallen below $100 a barrel. It is now trading around $99 a barrel on Friday morning.
A couple of months ago, the crude oil prices touched $126/barrel level, the highest-ever, but later on prices starting falling gradually due to various reasons.
Traders are selling oil again as concern about the course of the global economy deepens, taking the upper hand over supply fears. Brent crude has lost more than $26 per barrel over the past month while the West Texas Intermediate has lost nearly $30 per barrel. Recession fears appear to be the biggest driver of the price decline, with demand still robust despite prices.
Hedge funds are selling their oil and they sold the equivalent of 110 million barrels of crude oil and fuels across the six most traded contracts.
This has brought the total volume sold across these contracts to a little over 200 million barrels over the past four weeks, Kemp noted. The acceleration in selling over the week to July 5 becomes even more notable in the context of the four-week total. Forecasts of a recession, specifically in the United States, are multiplying, causing a blow to crude oil prices.
