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Oil prices should grind higher into the $60s later this year, RBC's Croft says
Despite oil's negative reaction to the OPEC production cut extension, prices should grind higher into the $60s by the fourth quarter, RBC's Helima Croft told CNBC on Thursday. Prices plunged after OPEC and other major exporters extended their deal to limit oil production for nine months , disappointing investors who were anticipating deeper output cuts. Croft, global head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, said the extension was a forgone conclusion, but getting a deeper production cut would have been a challenge. Brent crude oil (Intercontinental Exchange Europe: @LCO.1) dropped 5 percent, or $2.70, to $51.44 a barrel by 3:06 p.m. OPEC announced the agreement to cut oil production in November, but surging U.S. output, weak fuel demand and persistently robust OPEC exports in the first half of the year offset those reductions.
British stock markets bucked the downward trend and hit record highs. Friday's partial rebound for oil prices followed a day of downward pressure. For Reuters Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets see reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=http://emea1.apps.cp.extranet.thomsonreuters.biz/cms/?pageId=livemarkets(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak, Richard Leong, Saqib Iqbal Ahmed and Julia Simon in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski and James Dalgleish) Sterling slid more than 1 percent following a poll showing the ruling Conservatives' lead shrinking two weeks before an election. The G7 summit comes after Trump criticized NATO allies' military spending and condemned German trade policies a day earlier.
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collected by :John Miller