Oil hits one-year low on demand fears
Oil prices fell five percent to $82 a barrel, a one-year low, as fears that market turmoil will send demand for fuel slumping outweighed news that OPEC will hold an emergency meeting in November.
FTSE up as energy stocks gainWith the financial crisis now almost a month old, Japan's Nikkei stock index .N225 plunged nearly 11 percent on Friday, while the yen and gold rose on growing concerns that no government effort so far has kept the global economy from a path to recession.
Investors, who earlier this year piled into oil and other commodities as a hedge against inflation and the weak dollar, are putting cash into safer havens and have sent oil plummeting by more than $60 from its record high above $147 in July.
U.S. light crude for November delivery fell $4.16, or 4.8 percent, to $82.43 a barrel by 6:03 a.m. British time, just above its earlier low of $82.00, in its biggest two-week decline since the start of the Iraq war in 2003.
London Brent crude shed $3.71 to $78.95 a barrel, the first time it has been below $80 in a year.
"The decline in oil prices was despite OPEC indicating that it will hold an extraordinary meeting on 18 November," said David Moore, a commodity strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said it would hold the emergency meeting in Vienna to discuss the impact of the financial crisis on the oil market.
The statement came after calls from OPEC ministers this week for action to halt a slide in oil prices.
"OPEC appears to be scrambling to put in another, firmer floor at $80," said Jonathan Kornafel, Asia director of U.S. based options trader Hudson Capital Energy.
"The market may still overshoot on the downside regardless of what OPEC does, as financial flows continue to pour out of commodities," he added.
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