Oil’s trading prices fell on Monday trading, as Brent Crude recorded $64.19 a barrel, while WTI recorded $58.86 a barell, after data revealed a decline in China’s exports for the fourth month in a row.
The export data raised a state of concern in a market already worried about the damage caused by the Sino-American trade war and its impact on global demand.
Medhat Youssef, an oil expert, told Daily News Egypt that the price of Brent per barrel rose on Friday by 1.5%, as a result of the agreement of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies to increase their production cuts by 500,000 barrels.
He pointed out that the continuing trade war between the United States and China, and the rise in US oil stocks by more than expected levels, in addition to fears of weak demand growth for oil next year, limited the effects of the OPEC agreement and its allies on further reducing oil production.
Accordingly, Youssef predicted that the price of a barrel of oil would continue to decline.
Morgan Stanley, an American multinational investment bank, said that OPEC and its allies plan to cut crude production to the end of the first quarter of next year would only support the market in the short term and that Brent crude is likely to return to $60 a barrel by mid-2020.
The bank cut its forecast for OPEC production next year by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 29.2m bpd after oil producers, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, agreed to cut production in the first quarter of 2020, but they refrained from adopting any commitment beyond March.
Despite the cuts, the bank expects non-OPEC supplies to grow to around 1.8m bpd next year, with a monthly growth of US production of 50,000 bpd, which will be slower than in 2018 and 2019.
Experts at Goldman Sachs predicted that crude oil prices will stabilise at current levels next year, where Brent is expected to stabilise at levels of $60 a barrel in 2020.
