Oil dips below $45 a barrel on OPEC comments

(Image credit: Joshua Lott/Getty Images)

published 13 January 2015

Global oil futures continued their slide, hitting another six-year low early Tuesday. The two global sweet crude benchmarks, Brent and West Texas Intermediate, both dropped below $45 a barrel, a low not seen since the Great Recession days of early 2009. Analysts blamed the new selloff on remarks by Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazroui, oil minister of the United Arab Emirates, who said that OPEC would stay the course with its decision to not cut production and predicted that oil prices would eventually stabilize at $80 a barrel or lower. The markets shrugged off positive news from China, which imported a record amount of oil in December.

"We are still very much sentiment-driven and the sentiment will continue to be negative as long as there is no change in production," says oil analyst Thina Saltvedt at Nordea Bank Norge. "Oil is still piling up."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.