Oil prices extended losses on Thursday as the markets were under considerable pressure amid a flood of bad news.
The West Texas Intermediate for April delivery decreased 1.48 U.S. dollars to settle at 31.50 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while Brent crude for May delivery was down 2.57 dollars to close at 33.22 dollars a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange.
"A number of factors are responsible for the renewed nose-dive," Carsten Fritsch, energy analyst at Commerzbank Research, said in a note Thursday, adding U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of a 30-day ban on foreigners arriving from most of Europe is likely to have a negative impact on energy demand.
Trump said on Wednesday night the country will suspend all travel from European countries except Britain for 30 days in a bid to fight the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.
Oil prices were also faced with several headwinds from the supply side.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies, led by Russia, failed to strike a deal on oil production cuts last week.
Following Russia's rejection of the output cuts proposal, Saudi Arabia, a key OPEC member, retaliated by slashing its official oil prices while announcing plans to lift production.
The United Arab Emirates also said that it intends to step up its oil production to 4 million barrels per day in April. Meanwhile, Iraq and Kuwait have lowered their selling prices considerably, following Saudi Arabia's lead.
The fact that official data reported a steep rise in U.S. crude oil stocks did not help much, either.
For the week ending March 6, U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) increased by 7.7 million barrels from the previous week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported on Wednesday.
Editor:Cherie
