主题：【原创】目前油价的认识 -- oiler2

不好意思，只有英文：

Oil rebounds on Nigerian violence

Firefight erupts near Shell facility; crude ends a two-day slide and reverses earlier sell-off sparked by bulging U.S. supplies.

October 4 2006: 3:58 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Oil prices rebounded from eight-month lows Wednesday, ending higher after renewed violence racked OPEC member Nigeria.

U.S. light crude for October delivery settled up 73 cents at 59.41 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil fell as low as $57.75 earlier in the session after the weekly inventory report showed a big build in U.S. crude and gasoline supplies.

But the Nigerian violence ended that slide.

Nigerian militants and troops engaged in a major firefight near an oil pumping station operated by Royal Dutch Shell in the eastern part of the Niger Delta on Wednesday, militants said.

The militant group Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said it killed nine soldiers and seized two military boats during a 90-minute firefight with troops in the oil heartland of Africa's top oil producer.

The group said in an e-mail to the media that it was sending another 500 fighters into Rivers State in the eastern delta to begin a "number of strategic attacks" on the oil industry.

"If there is more fighting there [in Nigeria], our supplies of light, sweet crude will be directly affected," Mark Waggoner, president of Excel Futures in Huntington Beach, California, told Reuters.

Nigeria, the world's eighth-largest oil exporter, has seen 500,000 barrels of its prized sweet, light crude shut in as militants from a poor but oil-rich region battle with the government for a greater share of the nation's oil wealth.

Bulging supplies

Earlier in the day, the Energy Information Administration said crude stocks rose by 3.3 million barrels. Analysts were looking for a decline of 500,000 barrels, according to Reuters.

Distillates, used to make heating oil and diesel fuel and closely watched ahead of the winter months, rose by 200,000 barrels, while gasoline supplies rose by 1.2 million barrels. Analysts were looking for a build of 700,000 barrels in gasoline and 1.5 million barrel gain in distillates.

EIA said supplies of gasoline, distillates and crude are either above or well above average levels for this time of year.

Oil prices have slid in recent weeks, losing more than 25 percent from an all-time, noninflation-adjusted trading high of $78.40 set in July, as tensions eased in the Middle East, oil entered its traditional low-demand season and speculative money left the market.

On Tuesday crude closed below the $60 mark for the first time in nearly seven months, pushed down by predictions of brimming U.S. stockpiles and no major hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico.

But the quick slide has sparked concern among some oil-producing countries, and traders took notice Wednesday when OPEC heavyweight Kuwait said it may join Venezuela and Nigeria in voluntarily cutting production.

"Kuwait may voluntarily lower [oil output] in order to maintain the market's stability," Sheikh Ali al-Jarrah al-Sabah told Reuters in an interview.

"The current situation with prices and the big retreat that has taken place is uncomfortable for OPEC nations," he added.

Pressed on price, he told Reuters $60 a barrel for U.S. crude was comfortable, but $50 was worrying.

But Sal Gilbertie, an energy trader at Fimat in New York, said even an OPEC cut might not cause more than a short-term uptick in the price of crude.

On Tuesday OPEC President Edmund Daukoru called on other OPEC members to follow the lead set by Nigeria and Venezuela in cutting exports.

Last week Venezuela and Nigeria said they would cut production by about 170,000 barrels per day.

But the announcement had little effect on price, with some analysts calling the move merely an attempt to hide the fact that neither country is producing up to its full OPEC quota anyway because of years of civil strife or neglected oil field investment.

The world uses nearly 84 million barrels of oil per day, with more than a third of it coming from OPEC.

Although that number may make the announced cut from Venezuela and Nigeria seem trivial, the world can only produce between 1 and 2 million barrels more per day than it consumes.

It is this tightness between supply and demand, and doubt that future supply will match demand growth, that is the main reason crude prices have tripled over the past four years.