Commodity Blog

Crude oil slid today, falling to the lowest level in more than a year, as fears of the European debt crisis reemerged. Initially, commodities rallied after pro-bailout political parties won a majority in the parliament at the Greek elections this weekend. The optimism was short-lived, though, as concerns simply shifted from Greece to Spain. Moreover, the Greek debt problems remained and it is unclear how the new government is going to deal with them.

Crude failed to regain strength even after the European Union refused to lift embargo on Iranian oil exports. Iran showed willingness to find a compromise at the meeting in Moscow today, but EU leaders remained unmoved. Michael Mann, a foreign-policy spokesman of the European Union, stated:

All the sanctions that are supposed to come into force on July 1 will come into force on July 1. We’ve taken a political decision that this is an important measure to put pressure on the Iranian regime.

July futures for delivery of crude oil dropped $0.75 (0.9 percent) to $83.28 per barrel by 13:45 on NYMEX. Brent crude climbed from $98.78 to $99.50 per barrel intraday before tumbling to $95.71 as of 19:07 GMT on ICE today, while its daily minimum was at $95.40 — the lowest price since January 26, 2011.

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