Oil Falls to Six Year Low

On Tuesday afternoon in New York, the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil crashed further below $43 a barrel, a new six-year low for the commodity. Near 5:02 p.m. ET, WTI was down over 2% to trade around $42.65 a barrel. The latest decline comes after new data confirmed that US oil inventories are still surging. API data shows US crude inventories rose by 10.5m barrels in the week to March 13 to 450m barrels above expectations for 3.8m barrels.

Last week, crude oil prices fell 9%, taking another meaningful leg lower after a few weeks of relative stability with WTI prices near $5o. As oil production has continued to ramp up from US shale plays, a number of strategists have said that prices are going lower because the market is simply oversupplied.

Back in November, a major catalyst for the major breakdown in oil prices was OPEC’s decision not to cut oil production, a decision that has also led to oversupply of the market. On Monday, Business Insider’s Shane Ferro reported that Ibrahim Al-Muhanna, an adviser to the Saudi minister of petroleum, said OPEC’s decision not to cut production wasn’t based on political motives, but made simply because some OPEC producers were not ready to cut production — and OPEC does not act alone, Al-Muhanna said.