World oil prices hit a four-year low this week after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) agreed to maintain production at 30 million barrels per day, Bloomberg reports.
On commodity markets, West Texas Intermediate crude oil was trading below $70 per barrel and Brent Crude was below $73 for the first time since 2010.
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“The Saudis were able to pull this off, which is pretty amazing,” Phil Flynn of the Price Futures Group in Chicago told Bloomberg. Last month on resilience.org, financial analyst Deborah Lawrence cast collapsing global oil prices as OPEC’s attempt to squeeze U.S. shale producers between declining supplies and high debt.
Earlier today, OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla El-Badri said producers would “watch how the market behaves to this 30 million,” and teased reporters for fretting about falling prices. “Why are you concerned about this?” he asked. “Unless you are a trader, but if you are a journalist, that’s good for you.”
