The price of crude oil rose by
nearly three percent yesterday August 8. This occurred just as Mohammed
Al-Sada, the President of OPEC and Qatar’s minister of energy and industry
stated that “higher oil demand is expected in the third and fourth quarters”
due to recent stability experienced in the oil industry after a period of
supply outages and decrease in oil inventories.
His statement got instant
replies in the market as Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil,
increased from $42 to $45.33 a barrel. Also, OPEC basket price surged from
$40.08 to $41.10 a barrel as confirmed by the organization’s secretariat.
The 70% drop in the crude price over
the last 18 months has hit the budgets of oil-dependent nations such as
Nigeria, Venezuela, Russia, and even some of the richer Gulf nations such as
Bahrain. There is hope that the economies of major oil consuming countries will
improve so that global oil demand can increase.
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