Oil Trades Near $100 as OPEC Officials Say They Can’t End Rally

Jan. 3 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil traded near yesterday’s record of $100 a barrel as OPEC officials said the group can’t curb prices and the U.S. refused to release emergency supplies.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is unable to counter the rally, Libyan and Qatari officials said today. The U.S. doesn’t plan to tap strategic reserves, a spokeswoman for President Bush said yesterday. A report today is expected to show U.S. commercial stockpiles fell for a seventh week.


… OPEC’s production is already close to maximum capacity and the organization “can do nothing” to curb prices, Shokri Ghanem, the chairman of Libya’s National Oil Corp., said in a telephone interview from Tripoli today.

OPEC, supplier of more than 40 percent of the world’s oil, can’t lower the price because it’s driven by speculative investors rather than fundamentals, Al Arabiya reported, citing Qatari Oil Minister Abdullah al-Attiyah.

Bloomberg