Oil price advances for second day to $52.22/bbl

Oil price has advanced to $52.22 a barrel Wednesday morning trading after weekly data showed US crude stockpiles declined and it is good news for oil exporters like Nigeria facing an unprecedented dollar shortage.

OPEC’s insistence that it is confident Russia will cooperate with an agreement to trim supply appears to have helped to push up oil price for a second day running according to a note by Goldman Sachs.

Head of the oil cartel says the issue of Russia not participating in oil output accord “doesn’t arise.

OPEC Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo told reporters at Oil & Money conference in London that Russia was in on the deal.

Oil analysts in London say the world should get used to oil prices between $50 and $60 a barrel as falling costs in America’s shale fields counteract OPEC’s renewed commitment to supply management.

That’s the consensus among executives, traders and officials gathered at the annual Oil and Money conference in London on Tuesday.

A prolonged period of crude trading in that range would signal that while the worst has passed for the global industry, there’ll be more financial pain ahead for oil-exporting countries and subdued profits at the largest energy companies.

The price outlook was reinforced in an unusually open speech by a board member of state monopoly Saudi Aramco, where he suggested the world’s biggest oil exporter doesn’t expect prices to rally much further before the end of the decade.

Saudi Arabia, which is marshalling a potential deal with global crude producers to limit output, is said to have lifted sales to China, the world’s second biggest oil consumer after cutting the pricing for its supply.

The Middle East nation sold 1.2m to 1.3m bbl/day to China last month, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the information is confidential. That’s about 4.91m to 5.32m MT for all of September, compared with the 4.36m that government data show was purchased from Saudi Arabia in August.