New York – Oil prices slipped below $58 a barrel Thursday after OPEC ministers said they would maintain crude production at existing levels, as expected.
Light, sweet crude for April delivery fell 61 cents to settle at $57.55 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The decline came late in the afternoon, after prices earlier climbed as high as $58.64. April Brent crude on the ICE Futures exchange in London slipped 8 cents to $60.98 a barrel.
“There were no real surprises, so people took profits,” said Phil Flynn of Alaron Trading Corp.
Ministers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, meeting in Vienna, believe the oil market has a balance between supply and demand, officials said.
“The market is stable; the market is healthy,” said OPEC secretary general Abdalla Salem El-Badri of Libya. “We don’t need to touch it this time.”
OPEC, though, also warned that volatility in oil prices is likely to continue this year. Prices have zigzagged recently, sometimes sharply during the same day, buoyed by tensions with Iran and weighed by mild winter temperatures in the Northeast. OPEC’s next meeting is set for Sept. 11.
That long wait breaks from OPEC’s recent protocol of meeting roughly every three months, said Tim Evans, energy analyst at Citigroup Global Markets.
“If anything, I view that as a bullish aspect,” he said. “It does mean they’re unlikely to raise production before October, which will let the market sweat a little bit for how much oil is going to be available for the Northern Hemisphere’s winter, which is when demand for petroleum worldwide is at a seasonal peak.”
