The price of Brent crude oil dropped towards $48 a barrel today following a reduction in the worldwide economic growth forecast for 2015 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Reuters reported that Brent crude traded around $48.44 a barrel, while US crude traded $1.50 below Friday’s close at $47.19 a barrel.
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The IMF said in its latest World Economic Outlook report that worldwide growth is estimated at 3.5% for 2015 and 3.7% for 2016, a reduction of 0.3 percentage points for both years.
IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard was quoted by the news agency as saying: "New factors supporting growth, lower oil prices, but also depreciation of euro and yen, are more than offset by persistent negative forces."
Oil prices were also affected by weak economic data from China, which showed the country’s weakest annual growth in 24 years.
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China’s National Bureau of Statistics said the country’s economy increased 7.4% in 2014, 0.1% less than the target of 7.5%, with growth in the fourth quarter at 7.3%.
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By GlobalDataAccording to calculations by Reuters, China’s implied oil demand increased 3% in 2014, consuming around 10.06 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil.
China raised its refining capacity to approximately 600,000 million bpd and crude imports continued to increase.
