Oil prices steady ahead of US report
Thursday, 26 June 2008
SINGAPORE, June 25 (AFP): Oil prices held steady in Asian trade Wednesday ahead of a weekly report on US energy stockpiles and after OPEC's president rebuffed calls for the cartel to boost output.
In afternoon Asian trade, New York's main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for August delivery, was unchanged from its close of 137.00 dollars per barrel in New York Tuesday. Brent North Sea crude for August eased one cent to 136.45 dollars following a climb of 55 cents to 136.46 dollars in London. Oil prices have almost doubled over the past year and last week both contracts struck intra-day highs near 140 dollars a barrel.
The soaring crude costs, in a market facing tight supply, have triggered protests in several countries and fears for global economic growth. Saudi Arabia, the largest crude oil exporter in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel, said at a weekend summit of oil consumers and producers that it was raising daily output by more than 200,000 barrels to 9.7 million.
The Saudi output increase, to counter the fears of inflation- hit consumers, exposed divisions within OPEC at the summit. OPEC president Chakib Khelil and others were opposed to increasing production.
Another report from Khurais (Saudi Arabia) adds: Deep in the Saudi desert, 28,000 Asian workers are racing to get a giant oil processing complex ready to help King Abdullah keep a vow to meet world demand for crude.
In a year's time, the Al-Khurais field will be supplying 1.2 million barrels a day of Arab light crude to thirsty global markets, under a tight schedule set by Saudi Aramco, the national oil giant.
The king, and other top Saudi officials, promised at an oil summit they hosted in Jeddah Sunday to increase current production by 200,000 barrels a day to 9.7 million barrels and to supply any further increase in global demand.
In temperatures that seldom fall under 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) during the day, workers from Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, the Philippines and other nations wear hoods against the sun as they finish the hundreds of kilometres (miles) of pipelines, three 600,000 barrel storage tanks, 15,000 horsepower pumps and a bomb proof control centre that make up the 10 billion dollar complex.
Khurais is city-sized but can only be reached up a seemingly endless desert road, with truck tyres and carcases of burned out cars strewn along the sides and black camels roaming in the dunes.
Aramco took journalists this week to its latest "mega project", about 100 miles (160 kilometres) east of Riyadh, which will handle oil extracted from its Khurais, Abu Jifan and Mazalij fields.
The company calls it "the largest industrial project in the world."
Together the three fields have estimated reserves of 27 billion barrels and their joint daily production of 1.2 million barrels will be more than OPEC's three smallest members Indonesia, Qatar and Ecuador, according to Aramco.
World demand is growing by about one per cent a year and Saudi Arabia has vowed to invest tens of billions of dollars to take production capacity to 12.5 million barrels by the end of next year and eventually 15 million if the demand is there.
In afternoon Asian trade, New York's main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for August delivery, was unchanged from its close of 137.00 dollars per barrel in New York Tuesday. Brent North Sea crude for August eased one cent to 136.45 dollars following a climb of 55 cents to 136.46 dollars in London. Oil prices have almost doubled over the past year and last week both contracts struck intra-day highs near 140 dollars a barrel.
The soaring crude costs, in a market facing tight supply, have triggered protests in several countries and fears for global economic growth. Saudi Arabia, the largest crude oil exporter in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel, said at a weekend summit of oil consumers and producers that it was raising daily output by more than 200,000 barrels to 9.7 million.
The Saudi output increase, to counter the fears of inflation- hit consumers, exposed divisions within OPEC at the summit. OPEC president Chakib Khelil and others were opposed to increasing production.
Another report from Khurais (Saudi Arabia) adds: Deep in the Saudi desert, 28,000 Asian workers are racing to get a giant oil processing complex ready to help King Abdullah keep a vow to meet world demand for crude.
In a year's time, the Al-Khurais field will be supplying 1.2 million barrels a day of Arab light crude to thirsty global markets, under a tight schedule set by Saudi Aramco, the national oil giant.
The king, and other top Saudi officials, promised at an oil summit they hosted in Jeddah Sunday to increase current production by 200,000 barrels a day to 9.7 million barrels and to supply any further increase in global demand.
In temperatures that seldom fall under 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) during the day, workers from Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, the Philippines and other nations wear hoods against the sun as they finish the hundreds of kilometres (miles) of pipelines, three 600,000 barrel storage tanks, 15,000 horsepower pumps and a bomb proof control centre that make up the 10 billion dollar complex.
Khurais is city-sized but can only be reached up a seemingly endless desert road, with truck tyres and carcases of burned out cars strewn along the sides and black camels roaming in the dunes.
Aramco took journalists this week to its latest "mega project", about 100 miles (160 kilometres) east of Riyadh, which will handle oil extracted from its Khurais, Abu Jifan and Mazalij fields.
The company calls it "the largest industrial project in the world."
Together the three fields have estimated reserves of 27 billion barrels and their joint daily production of 1.2 million barrels will be more than OPEC's three smallest members Indonesia, Qatar and Ecuador, according to Aramco.
World demand is growing by about one per cent a year and Saudi Arabia has vowed to invest tens of billions of dollars to take production capacity to 12.5 million barrels by the end of next year and eventually 15 million if the demand is there.