Forexpros – Crude oil continued its slide on a stronger dollar and euro zone debt fears on Friday. Worries that the much heralded European Union summit will fail to produce viable debt crisis solutions added nervousness to the market.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light sweet crude futures for January settlement traded at USD97.69 a barrel, slipping 0.60%.
It earlier hit a high of USD98.57 a barrel.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, stated it was in no hurry to agree to a new production quota at OPEC’s December 14th meeting.
Strength in the U.S. dollar worked to depress crude prices. The dollar index, which tracks the performance of the greenback versus a basket of six other major currencies, was higher by 0.29% to trade at 79.09.
Dollar strength usually hurts commodities, as it lessens their appeal as an alternative asset class and makes dollar-priced commodities more expensive for holders of other currencies.
Ric Spooner, a chief analyst at CMC markets in Sydney, explained to Bloomberg, “Europe is the driving feature of all these risk markets. The obvious implication for all commodity markets is if we’re going to have poor confidence levels, then that’ll impact on world demand and has the potential to soften prices.”
Concerns over growth in China and Japan also helped to depress crude prices.
Elsewhere on the ICE Futures Exchange, Brent oil futures for January settlement gave back 0.5% to trade at USD107.54 a barrel.
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