Crude-oil futures settled sharply lower on Tuesday, 20 January 2015 at Nymex as investors weighed a batch of downbeat views on global economic growth, including news that China's economy expanded at its slowest pace in decades. U.S. markets were closed on Monday for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
Crude futures for delivery in February fell $2.30, or 4.7%, to end at $46.39 a barrel. Oil resumed its losing ways after finishing Friday with a weekly gain, snapping a seven-week streak of declines.
U.S. crude prices fell after Iraq said it's producing a record amount of crude. Iran's oil minister, meanwhile, said that his country could withstand $25-a-barrel oil.
Also Monday, the IMF cut its global growth forecast for 2015 by 0.3 percentage point to 3.5%. The fund expects the world economy to expand 3.7% in 2016. While lower oil prices will help boost growth, this benefit will be more than offset by negative factors such as weak investment, as economies adjust to lower growth expectations, the International Monetary Fund said in its latest report.
On Tuesday, China reported economic growth in 2014 slowed to 7.4%, its weakest rate in a quarter century, barely meeting the government's rough target of about 7.5%. But that also was above the 7.2% that many traders expected.
Among other energy products, Nymex reformulated gasoline blendstock for February, the benchmark gasoline contract fell 5 cents, or 3.7%, to settle at $1.31 a gallon.
Natural gas prices for February dived 30 cents, or 9.6%, to settle at $2.83 per million British thermal units.