Kevin Norrish Oil Quotations

News that four foreign oil workers held hostage by Nigerian militants have been released (was) helping prices to ease back a bit.

U.S. oil inventories have risen rapidly, relative to normal patterns over the last four weeks. At the level of politics and geopolitical risks, the shadows have continued to gather and darken.

What we are seeing is not a function of the world running out of oil. What we are seeing is the legacy of a very long period where investment has been far too low. The problem is getting the oil out of the ground and delivering it to consumers.

With global inventory still at extremely low levels and particular concern over low product and crude oil inventory in the U.S., there is little obvious sign of any significant weakness.

Oil markets sentiment remains dominated by the escalation of attacks in Nigeria.

Oil prices have fallen since the release of worse than expected US oil inventory figures on Wednesday but the potential for the Iranian situation to worsen during the course of the IAEA meeting currently underway is keeping oil market participants wary.

With plenty of crude oil available to the market at present and some OPEC members signaling that lower oil prices may be acceptable to the group, the stage may well be set for further tests of support over the coming weeks.

This is definitely not about buying up oil resources in order to ship the oil into China.

After such a slow 2005 for Chinese oil demand an acceleration in growth looks highly likely in 2006 and this will exert further pressure on oil supply and prices.

Iran matters more than is currently priced in and Iran's external relations remain the key wild card. We continue to see the situation as representing the major upside risk for oil prices this year.

It's because we've had such an explosive rise in heating oil prices -- I don't think we've ever seen such a dramatic increase in the spread between heating oil and crude.