"The price will go up and down and we expect to see a market correction. I don't think that it will stay at this level," an OPEC delegate said Thursday. "There has been no change in market fundamentals to justify such an increase," the delegate added, noting that freezing weather conditions in the high-consumption US northeast and renewed violence by militants in Nigeria's oil-producing region had propelled prices higher. "It could be speculation. The extreme weather was not expected but as far as market fundamentals are concerned, there is no change." On Wednesday January 2, the price of a barrel of WTI crude touched $100/barrel with one trade going through at that level.
"One would have thought there would have been a lot of fan fare when the market printed the much anticipated $100 level, but in fact it was pretty anticlimactic,"
a floor source at NYMEX said Wednesday.
Updated: January 3, 2008
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