By Adedapo Adesanya
The average price of 13 crudes of the members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) stood at $43.22 per barrel last Friday compared with $43.80 of the previous day, the latest OPEC Secretariat calculations revealed.
This indicated 58 cents or 1.32 per cent decline as the market reeled from the effects of record cuts reduction announced by OPEC and its allies from next month.
Also known as the OPEC reference basket of crude oil, the OPEC basket, a weighted average of oil prices from different OPEC members around the world, is used as an important benchmark for crude oil prices
The OPEC Reference Basket of Crudes (ORB) is made up of the following: Saharan Blend (Algeria), Girassol (Angola), Djeno (Congo), Zafiro (Equatorial Guinea), Rabi Light (Gabon), Iran Heavy (Islamic Republic of Iran), Basra Light (Iraq), Kuwait Export (Kuwait), Es Sider (Libya), Bonny Light (Nigeria), Arab Light (Saudi Arabia), Murban (UAE) and Merey (Venezuela).
In other OPEC related news, Venezuela’s crude output fell in June to the lowest level in nearly eighty years, data the country provided to OPEC showed.
Venezuela’s production stood at 393,000 barrels per day in June, down from 573,000 barrels per day in May and down 52 per cent from an average of 821,000 barrels per day in the first quarter of the year.
That marked the lowest monthly output since February 1943, when Venezuela’s emerging oil industry produced 353,000 barrels per day.
The drop in exports to a 77-year low of 379,000 barrels per day in June, is in part caused by a United States sanctions designed to oust its President Nicolas Maduro, has left onshore storage tanks almost completely full, forcing the national oil company to cut output because it would have nowhere to store crude.
Mr Maduro blames the US sanctions for the drop, but production has been falling sharply since 2016, before the sanction in January 2019, due to underinvestment and mismanagement.
Dipo Olowookere