The price of US WTI oil futures opened Tuesday’s trading session little changed near $85 a barrel as a strong Dollar Index is keeping a cap on higher crude for now.<\/p>\n
Latest WTI Oil Price<\/strong><\/p>\n US WTI oil futures for August 2012 delivery were at $85.53 a barrel, 11.29 GMT today on the NYMEX. Benchmark US crude dropped by $2.77, or 3.2 percent, last Friday to end the week at $84.45 per barrel.<\/p>\n Crude Oil Output and OPEC Price<\/strong><\/p>\n OPEC crude output dipped by 30,000 barrels per day to 31.72 million in June from 31.75 million in May, reversing most of the 40,000 increment of the previous month, a Platts survey of OPEC and oil industry officials and analysts showed July 9.<\/p>\n After a sustaining decline for nine consecutive weeks, the weekly average price of OPEC oil rebounded back to $96.69 per barrel last week, increasing by 6.5 percent compared to the previous week, the Vienna based cartel said Monday.<\/p>\n Some analysts believe, however, the rebound in crude oil price was due to some kind of technical operational factors, such as the increasing confidence on the international oil market because of the positive result at the EU summit at the end of June.<\/p>\n Besides, the monetary easing measures launched in succession by the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, as well as the no breakthrough of negotiations between the six-party and Iran, and the Western embargo on Iran’s crude oil with effect from 1st July were also considered factors supporting the crude oil price.<\/p>\n However, no obvious changes have been made in economic factors that affect oil price in real sense: The perspectives for the European debt crisis remain uncertain; the US economic recovery remains slow; and it still lacks of strong drive force supporting oil price.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n