Nyse oil prices going down, no tumbledown in view - experts say

Oil bids at the New York Stock Exchange ended on Friday at 38.49 dollars/barrel, or 79 cents below the Thursday closure and almost 10 percent below the record low 42.45 dollars/barrel last Tuesday.

The lowering futures quotations are due to the June 3 decision taken in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, at the OPEC extraordinary ministerial conference to increase in July the aggregate quota of crude oil production and exports by two billion barrels/day and, if need be, by another 500,000 barrels/day in August, all in all, up to 26 millions barrels/day (actually, the conference only legitimated oil surpluses dumped, in violation of corporate discipline, on the world markets by some countries exceeding their nationals quotas. Among such offenders, Venezuela, Algeria and Nigeria are most often cited).

Fears of a possible deficit of energy carriers have been dispelled by the United States Energy Department report that last week the national oil reserves were being daily replenished by 10.7 million barrels to reach a record high since August 2002.

The United States accounts for about 25 percent of the world's consumption of oil.

Meanwhile, specialists do not expect oil prices to plummet in the next few weeks. In the opinion of Yasser Elguindi, analyst at the New York-based company Medley Global Advisors, this summer a barrel of American light-density oil will cost an average of 35 dollars.