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OPEC considers more cuts

Alisa Roth Dec 14, 2006
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OPEC considers more cuts

Alisa Roth Dec 14, 2006
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TEXT OF STORY

SCOTT JAGOW: The people who control more than a third of the oil in this world are meeting right now in Nigeria. OPEC’s considering a second cut in production to follow the one about a month ago. But the countries that buy OPEC’s oil want the cartel to hold off on that. Winter’s coming and that’s when everybody uses more oil. Alisa Roth looks at the prospects for those heating bills.


ALISA ROTH: Back in July, crude oil was trading at record high prices: $78 a barrel.

So by that count, the prediction from Deutsche Bank’s Adam Sieminski seem like a downright bargain.

ADAM SIEMINSKI: Markets staying in the $60 to $65 range for crude oil and natural gas prices probably somewhere near $7.50, $8 over the course of the winter.

Prices are still high enough to leave homeowners hoping for a mild winter, but Sieminski says you can pretty much forget about prices ever falling to, say, the $20-something a barrel they were back in the 1990s.

SIEMINSKI: It would take a really, very serious global recession to reduce demand enough to force prices down to that level.

Siminski says OPEC’s last production cut is already helping balance out supply and demand. He says that’ll keep the market stable for now.

In New York, I’m Alisa Roth for Marketplace.

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