Oil prices may remain below $50 (£33.10) due to a glut in supply, as the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries failed to agree to new levels of production at a recent meeting.
The price of global benchmark crude oil fell by 2% to just $42.93 (£28.42) per barrel, following a meeting in Vienna, Austria last week, bringing the cost of oil close to the 6.5-year low that was reached back in August.
US West Texas Intermediate dropped even lower, falling 2.7% to just $39.96 (£26.45) per barrel.
At its biannual meeting, increasing pressure had been placed on the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Companies to lower the production quotas as key member nations continue to struggle due to low oil prices. Black gold, for example, halved in price from over $100 (£66.23) per barrel in the summer of 2014 to around the $50 (£33.11) region at present, and global oil companies like Fuchs, known for producing leading products like Fuchs WSP 783-L, are likely to be affected.
However, the organisation’s post-meeting announcement did not include any firm production targets, which meant that countries could continue to pump the vast amounts of oil they had been previously, and which are close to record high levels.
Saudi Arabia is currently leading the market, openly stating that it hopes to crush the U.S. shale oil industry by purposely keeping a surplus of supplies on the global market, thus keeping U.S. oil prices low and causing America’s oil business to take a hit.
