OPEC continues to produce significantly in excess of demand

Brent crude futures, the global benchmark, traded down 55 cents at US$49.01 a barrel.

Taking the brunt of OPEC's price war against American shale-oil production are companies operating in communities like Hobbs (N.M.), and in Hobbs' case, most are independently owned small businesses, and many are minority-owned.

But it showed that Gulf oil producers aim to keep pumping hard as they expect weak oil prices next year when sanctions on Iran are lifted allowing it to export more to an oversupplied market, the sources said.

"Net crude oil imports fell and inputs to refineries rebounded strongly", said Thomas Pugh, a commodities economist at Capital Economics and author of the report. Among the 12 members of OPEC, production is predicted to increase only in Iran and Iraq. According to Barclays, Chinese oil demand growth weakened to 2.1% over the year in September. On average, Irans output will rise 300,000 barrels a day and Iraqs will increase 240,000 barrels a day, compared with a year earlier, he estimated.

Saudi crude OSPs are usually released around the fifth of each month, setting the trend for Iranian, Kuwaiti and Iraqi prices, and affecting more than 12 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude bound for Asia.

According to industry research group Baker Hughes (N:BHI), the number of rigs drilling for oil in the US decreased by 16 last week to 578, the ninth straight weekly decline and the lowest level since June 2010. Analysts had expected the index to inch up to 50.0 last month. By January of 2009, Venezuela's oil basket had fallen to a low of $27.10 a barrel.

Russia's report on record oil production in October hit a post-Soviet record of 10.78 million barrels per day and exacerbated the global supply glut. A few pundits have also speculated that Russian Federation and Saudi Arabia will cut a deal to curtail their output and drive prices higher. With the expected resumption of Iranian oil exports in the coming months, analysts and industry leaders are bracing for a " lower for longer" scenario. Today we stand to say that next year will be another bad one for the oil prices, but we should not be that pessimistic.

From the fourth quarter of 1985 to the first quarter of 1989, OPEC grew its oil output from less than 15 million barrels per day to 20.4 million barrels per day.

"US stockpiles continued to increase, with data from the US Department of Energy indicating that oil inventories remained more than 100 million barrels above the five-year seasonal average", he said.

U.S oil companies have disclosed more than 72,000 job cuts in 2015.

Calling such concern over the impact of lower prices on access to funding 'exaggerated, ' Wood Mackenzie recently said it was upbeat that U.S. independent E&P companies will emerge largely unscathed from the current round of reserves-based-lending reviews by their creditors.