Oil price free fall seen continuing in '09 due to Gulf state debts
Saturday, December 13, 2008 Free Headline Alerts
ABU DHABI — Analysts expect the price of crude oil to continue to fall in 2009.
Gulf analysts said oil-producing states have been saddled with debt and must sell oil at any price.
The analysts said the price of crude oil could drop to $30 a barrel, severely harming several Persian Gulf oil states.
"If external debt is high and needs servicing, some regional producers could have a problem, and we may see major downstream and upstream projects being put on hold," Dalton Garis, an economics professor at the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi, said.
Garis told the Abu Dhabi-based Gulf News that oil prices would not return to the level of 2006 for at least another two years. He cited the global credit crisis and recession.