Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 21 /Trend, A.Badalova/
The death of Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi means little for today's oil price, major U.S. investment bank JP Morgan's analysts believe.
"Three months ago, reports that former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had been captured would have sent oil prices tumbling," analysts report said. But it means little for today's oil price, but it does remove one of a series of risk factors to a sustained ramp-up in Libyan production, they believe.
Libya's former leader Moamer Gaddafi was murdered on Thursday during the NATO's bombing attacks on a convey of cars fleeing from Sirte. His dead body was brought to the city of Misrata.
After the reports on his death world oil prices dropped. US light, sweet crude for December delivery, fell by $0.53 to $85.76 per barrel. December Brent crude dropped by $0.78 to $109.24per barrel on the ICE Exchange.
"We would argue that virtually all of the news emerging from Libya over the past six weeks has been positive on the production side and we believe that the oil market is discounting a relatively rapid return of at least the first 700 kbd of production," analysts said in their report.
The real issue for the oil market is how effectively producers will be able to rebalance the market given a likely lumpy and uncertain Libyan return, the analysts believe.
Since February, unrest in Libya resulted in curtailed natural gas exports to Italy. Prior to the February curtailment, Libya supplied Italy with about 900 MMcf/d of natural gas, or 11 percent of Italy's average daily gas demand in 2010, EIA (Energy Information Administration) reported. Italy offset much of the reduced natural gas imports from Libya with increased imports of natural gas from Russia.
On October 13, 2011, Libya resumed natural gas exports to Italy Greenstream Pipeline. Natural gas delivery imports to Sicily, Italy, at the Gela receipt point, are now about 150 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d), EIA reported.
According to EIA, Libya has about 46.4 billion barrels of oil reserves, and about 55 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves. In 2010 total oil production in the country was close to 1.8 million barrels a day.