Oil Prices Dip; Nigeria to Return to Work
Enviado: 4/7/2003 12:26Reuters
Oil Prices Dip; Nigeria to Return to Work
Friday July 4, 6:44 am ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices turned tail on Friday as a general strike in Nigeria wound down, soothing fears that supplies from the world's eighth largest crude exporter would be shut in.
Brent crude futures traded in London -- holding center stage with the United States market closed for the Independence Day holiday -- dropped 39 cents to $27.81 a barrel.
Nigeria's blue-collar oil worker union NUPENG said on Friday it was halting a walkout of its members from oil export terminals after talks to end a general strike had moved close to an agreement.
The intervention of Vice-President Atiku Abubakar gave fresh momentum to negotiations in Abuja on Thursday.
"We believe by tomorrow or so we will have an agreement," Abubakar told reporters.
The week-long strike and mass protests were sparked by a steep rise in fuel prices. Nigeria ground to a standstill with ports, banks, hospitals and shops shut. Four days of violent protests claimed eight lives a week ahead of a visit to the OPEC (News - Websites)member by President Bush.
The threatened loss of Nigeria's around two million barrels a day of crude output had rattled a market adjusting to a long wait for the return to near normal exports from the shell-shocked Iraqi oil industry.
Iraq's state oil marketing organization SOMO issued a new tender for sales of Basra crude on Thursday, the first supply from its oilfields after initial post-war exports from crude held in storage were completed this week.
But averaging the eight million barrels on offer over the period of the tender showed a supply rate around a third of Baghdad's target for mid-July of a million barrels per day.
Oil Prices Dip; Nigeria to Return to Work
Friday July 4, 6:44 am ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices turned tail on Friday as a general strike in Nigeria wound down, soothing fears that supplies from the world's eighth largest crude exporter would be shut in.
Brent crude futures traded in London -- holding center stage with the United States market closed for the Independence Day holiday -- dropped 39 cents to $27.81 a barrel.
Nigeria's blue-collar oil worker union NUPENG said on Friday it was halting a walkout of its members from oil export terminals after talks to end a general strike had moved close to an agreement.
The intervention of Vice-President Atiku Abubakar gave fresh momentum to negotiations in Abuja on Thursday.
"We believe by tomorrow or so we will have an agreement," Abubakar told reporters.
The week-long strike and mass protests were sparked by a steep rise in fuel prices. Nigeria ground to a standstill with ports, banks, hospitals and shops shut. Four days of violent protests claimed eight lives a week ahead of a visit to the OPEC (News - Websites)member by President Bush.
The threatened loss of Nigeria's around two million barrels a day of crude output had rattled a market adjusting to a long wait for the return to near normal exports from the shell-shocked Iraqi oil industry.
Iraq's state oil marketing organization SOMO issued a new tender for sales of Basra crude on Thursday, the first supply from its oilfields after initial post-war exports from crude held in storage were completed this week.
But averaging the eight million barrels on offer over the period of the tender showed a supply rate around a third of Baghdad's target for mid-July of a million barrels per day.