Middle East Economic Survey

VOL. XLVIII

No 32

8-August-2005

Crude Prices Rise On King Fahds Death And Pushed Higher Still By Refinery Glitches

Crude oil prices rose on 1 August on the news of the death of Saudi Arabias King Fahd, reaching intra-day peaks of $62.30/B for WTI and $60.98/B for Brent before easing to new settlement records. Yet the market was already edgy because of a number of unexpected outages at refineries in the US and worldwide. Further symptoms of overstretched downstream...