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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mph who wrote (3754)	11/24/1997 9:53:00 PM
From: Bob A Louie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95453

Lower oil prices cannot help the drillers. Everyone says that the fundamentals have not changed. If oil prices drop long term then the integrated oil's fundamentals change. History shows that the price of oil does effect capital spending. This is what's spooking the market. - Bill Oil Marks Time Ahead of OPEC, Grains Ease NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices closed slightly higher Monday as nervousness surrounding an upcoming meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries kept prices near unchanged most of the day. At the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil for January delivery closed seven cents higher at $19.83 a barrel in very thin trading conditions, traders said. "Uncertainty about what will happen with the OPEC rollover and what tone the meeting will have has sidelined trading," said trader Andy Lebow at E.D. & F. Man International Inc. in New York. OPEC accounts for about 40 percent of world oil supply. The group's 11 oil ministers head for Jakarta, Indonesia, this week hoping to cut a balanced deal to allow them to pump more oil without sparking an oil price slide. The officials meet from November 26 to December 1 to agree production targets for next year, with top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia urging the first major reshuffle of production quotas in four years. But OPEC does not want to spark a price fall. Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi in October lifted the lid on a long-suppressed wrangle over quotas when he proposed OPEC overhaul its leaky supply ceiling by setting realistic levels. Widespread quota cheating meant actual OPEC output last month rose beyond 27.8 million barrels a day, independent estimates showed, against a self-imposed ceiling of about 25 million. Amid those abundant supplies, the timing and scale of Iraq's next "oil-for-food" deal with the United Nations is also unknown. Iraq has been allowed to sell $2 billion worth of oil every six months in exchange for badly need food and medicine. The current deal is due to end next month and some U.N. officials and countries are in favor of increasing the amount to between $3 billion and $4 billion every six months. Traders are also pointing to substantial supplies of heating oil this year as frigid weather hits the U.S. Northeast, although gasoline prices again buoyed petroleum values on Monday on talk of refinery operational problems on the U.S. Gulf coast. December gasoline ended 0.95 cent a gallon higher at 58.69 cents and December heating oil closed 0.12 cent a gallon higher at 55.60 cents.