Related Articles
Top Stories
May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 28 2012 07:53
The City of Cape Town has spent R175m running the Myciti bus service since the Soccer World Cup compared to an income of R35m, a report says.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
Singapore - Oil tumbled to a three-and-a-half year low below $49 a barrel on Friday, nearing a $100 drop from its July record high, as more distress for the global economy threatened to eat further into demand for fuels.
Asian stock markets dropped to a five-year low on Friday, tracking US stocks that hit their lowest in a decade the previous session as the fate of the country's major car makers continued to hang in the balance.
US light crude for January delivery fell $1.02 to $48.40 a barrel at 02:09 GMT, its sixth straight session of falls and a 14% drop for this week alone, heading for the largest weekly fall since early October.
London Brent crude shed 68c to $47.40 a barrel.
"The economy is pulling everything down like a black hole," said Anthony Nunan, risk management executive at Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Corp. "Until the economy stabilises, it will be hard for oil to put in a bottom."
Oil has lost two thirds of its value in just under four months since peaking above $147 in July, and is just above the lowest since May 2005 hit on Thursday.
Reflecting the sharp reversal in oil's fortunes, Goldman Sachs, which in May had been talking of a $200 a barrel superspike, on Thursday again cut its 2009 forecast for US crude oil to $80 a barrel from $86.
As demand tumbles, oil companies plan to store millions of barrels of crude in the hope economics will improve.
Shipping brokers said US oil trader Koch and Royal Dutch Shell had booked supertankers capable of storing 10 million barrels of crude, more than top exporter Saudi Arabia produces in a day.
The further falls in oil prices brought more Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries members out in support of further output cuts.
Libya's top oil official said the cartel may decide to reduce supply further at its informal meeting in Cairo next week if it finds members have implemented a previous decision to lower output.
The comments followed remarks from other Opec members, including Kuwait, Iran and Venezuela, raising the possibility of a further cut in supply to prop up oil prices.
Opec agreed in October to cut output by 1.5 million barrels per day, about 5%, from November 1, but the move has failed to stem the decline in oil prices.
- Reuters