The price of Brent crude oil has fallen to a new five-and-a-half year low of $52.27 per barrel, its lowest level since May 2009.<\/p>\n
Brent lost as much as 3% earlier on Tuesday to $51.23 before recovering.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”Z95bx8V75xOXfkpiwwoSaezoCrGrrUdA”]It follows Monday’s 6% plunge in prices. The fall appeared to have been prompted by Saudi Arabia cutting prices to Europe.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the kingdom, Opec’s largest oil-producing nation, raised them for Asian customers.<\/p>\n
Some analysts said the price cuts reflected Saudi Arabia’s deepening desire to defend its market share in Europe.<\/p>\n
US oil fell further on Tuesday to $48.54, having fallen below the symbolic threshold of $50 a barrel for the first time since April 2009 on Monday.<\/p>\n
The prices of both Brent crude and US oil, known as West Texas Intermediate crude, have now fallen by more than 50% since mid-2014.<\/p>\n
Investors are worried that a combination of global oversupply and weak oil demand could cause prices to tumble further.<\/p>\n
US oil production has soared recently, as fracking – or the process of extracting oil from shale rock by injecting fluids into the ground – has revolutionised oil production in the country, transforming US states such as North Dakota and Pennsylvania in the process.<\/p>\n
However, the increase in production has come just as demand for oil in economies across the world from Europe to China – the world’s second-largest consumer of oil – has slowed.<\/p>\n
Recent data also showed that Russia’s 2014 oil output hit a post-Soviet era high and exports from Iraq, Opec’s second-largest producer, reached their highest since 1980.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The price of Brent crude oil has fallen to a new five-and-a-half year low of $52.27 per barrel, its lowest level since May 2009. Brent lost as much as 3% earlier on Tuesday to $51.23 before recovering. [contextly_sidebar id=”Z95bx8V75xOXfkpiwwoSaezoCrGrrUdA”]It follows Monday’s 6% plunge in prices. The fall appeared to have been prompted by Saudi Arabia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":79892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[22,38,4],"class_list":["post-79891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-medcirclesgh","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-st-augustines-college"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/79892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}