Palestine Economy Portal

The US "Bloomberg" agency stated that the oil price war between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Russia after the latter's opposition to implementing the recommendations of the OPEC + technical committee on deepening production cuts, caused the loss of global energy shares $ 196 billion of their market value in just one week.

The American News Network said - in a report on its website Saturday - that the sessions of the past week witnessed intense sales and the suspension of trading at times, coinciding with the collapse of crude prices by 31%, which deepened the losses suffered by the global oil giants to exceed the rates of decline Its shares are 10%.

"Bloomberg" indicated that the US "Standard & Poor's 500" index of energy companies' shares never recovered the resounding losses incurred by the beginning of last week's trading, as the global energy sector shares declined more than 24% in general, the largest decline since October of The year 2008 was the worst performance among the various sectors over the whole of last week’s sessions.

"Bloomberg" added that all the hopes that investors had relied upon at the beginning of the year 2020 regarding a strong performance of the oil sector soon faded in light of the spread of travel bans globally in light of the outbreak of the "Corona" epidemic and quarantine measures in many countries of the world to contain the disease that It has become a major threat to global demand for raw and energy products in general.

The shares of major international oil companies recorded a sharp decline at the beginning of trading last week, driven by the collapse in crude prices more than 30% due to the failure of the agreement of the "OPEC +" coalition on deepening production cuts, and the state of panic dominating the markets due to the continued spread of the "Corona" virus.

The shares of “Exxon Mobil”, the American oil giant, fell by 11.6%, while the shares of “Chevron” fell about 12%. Shares of Marathon Oil plunged 25%.

And the agency "Bloomberg" said that what it described as a catastrophic collapse in oil prices would reflect on the global energy industry in general and would harm global economies dependent on its oil revenues, and would cause a restructuring of the form of global policies due to the economic and political repercussions it would entail.

The president of Saudi Aramco (SE: 2222), Engineer Amin bin Hassan Al-Nasser, said last week that the company had received guidance from the Ministry of Energy to work to raise the level of maximum sustainable production capacity from 12 to 13 million barrels per day.

It is noteworthy that Aramco reduced the price of selling crude oil for April by $ 3.10 from the average prices of the crudes of Oman and Dubai and a decrease of six dollars per barrel from March. The company also reduced the price of selling crude oil in April to the United States by $ 3.75 a barrel from the ASCII index. A decline of $ 7 from March, and Aramco reduced the official selling price of its light Arab crude for Northwest Europe by deducting $ 10.25 a barrel from the price of Brent by a decrease of $ 8 a barrel.