The spot price of crude oil pushed higher in the news of Saudia Arabia King Abdullah’s passing. The bulls are speculating on a shift in Saudia Arabia’s policy of letting crude prices to fall.
Early morning trading pushed WTI oil (USO, quote) by 0.25% to only reverse and continue lower, trading lower this afternoon by 0.65% at price of $46.08 (11:18am EDT) per barrel.
King Abdullah will be succeeded by his half-brother Crown Prince Salman. The succession comes as no surprise with King Abdullah was admitted to the hospital back in December for pneumonia at the age of 90.
Although there continues to be uncertainty in the Saudia’s energy policy it wasn’t that long ago crown prince Salman now King Salman spoke on behalf of the king said “there will be no change in energy policy whatsoever.”
Adding to the pressure to send oil lower this week’s U.S. Energy Department reported crude inventories jump by 10.1 million barrels, this an increase of 2.7 million barrels the market was expecting. Couple this with the ECB’s huge QE initiatives to push the Euro lower and in turn sending the U.S. dollar higher adds extreme pressure to U.S. dollar prices commodities.
Unless U.S. cuts its production output and/or Saudia Arabia cuts production we could find the today’s low of $44.20 being crushed. On the bright side cheap oil and gasoline will help emerging markets (EEM, quote) growth and we can see this effect already. Be sure to tune into Tim’s audio calls this all the week as he lays out cheap oil plays out in emerging markets.