Crude oil price edges up on concern about Iraq's supply
23/8/2005 11:15
Crude oil price rose slightly Monday after a power failure in Iraq caused
traders to worry about the country's supply.
Crude oil futures closed at
US$65.45 a barrel, up 10 cents on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In London,
the October Brent crude-oil futures contract rose 14 cents to close at US$64.50
a barrel.
On Monday, shipment of about 1.6 million barrels a day were halted
indefinitely after the outage shut pumps at the Basra Oil Terminal. Iraq, the
fifth-largest producer in the Middle East, was sending oil to storage during the
blackout.
"The Iraqi outage is cutting shipments and boosting prices," said a
Massachusetts-based energy expert.
Vulnerability in the oil supply chain cast
shadow on analysts' expectation of the future. The Center for Global Energy
Studies predicted that the crude oil price would remain higher in
2006.
Xinhua
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