Oil prices start creeping upward

Baku. 5 January. REPORT.AZ/ Price of Brent oil hit 56.46 USD/bbl after 2% rise on January 4. 

Report informs, the reason of oil prices jump is decrease of US oil stocks and December cut of output by OPEC.

Thus, Energy Information Agency (EIA) of US Energy Department reports US crude oils stocks decreased by 7.4 mln bbl more than tripling expectations of experts who had forecasted 2 mln bbl decrease.

Beside this, according to Bloomberg, OPEC cut down oil output by 310 thousand bbl or 0.93% to 33.1 mln bbl per day. Notably, this doesn’t include export of Indonesia, who decided to leave OPEC at Vienna summit, held on November 30. Nigeria contributed most to reduction of output. Thus, Nigeria cut its output for 200 thousand bbl or 12.1 to the level 1.45 mln bbl per day. Saudi Arabia reduced production for 50 rhousand bbl, Venezuela for 40 thousand bbl, Iran, Kuwait and Angola for 20 thousand bbl each.

Expert group of Report News Agency predicts the oil prices to float between 48-62 USD/bbl during first half of the year.