Commodities: Oil market rout continues as Brent tests $30

At 1705 GMT, Brent was down 2.22% or 70 cents at $30.85 per barrel, while WTI was down 2.83% or 89 cents at $30.52 per barrel, heading towards another record intra-session decline in wake of the supply glut and continuing worries over lacklustre demand.

Earlier in the session, the severity of the market decline led some OPEC members to call for an emergency meeting of the oil producers’ cartel to discuss a cut in crude production.

OPEC president Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu said an extraordinary meeting could be held in early March. "We did say that if it the oil price hits the $35 per barrel, we will begin to look at an extraordinary meeting," he added.

However, Saudi Arabia remains stubbornly resistant to calls for a production cut, claiming it does not wish to “subsidise” high cost non-OPEC oil production.

Away from the oil markets, base metal futures also fell across the London Metal Exchange board following further declines in Asia. Three-month delivery contracts of copper (down 0.4%), nickel (down 1.9%), zinc (down 0.9%) and tin (down 3.7%) extended the previous session’s losses in late afternoon trading. However, primary aluminium (up 0.6%) and lead (up 0.5%) futures posted nominal upticks.

Meanwhile, precious metals continued to slip lower. COMEX gold futures contract for February delivery fell 0.88% or $9.70 to $1,086.50 an ounce, while spot gold in Dubai was 0.74% or $8.09 lower at $1,086.11 an ounce.

Spot platinum was also down 0.61% or $5.11 at $839.44 an ounce, while COMEX silver fell to $13.77 an ounce, down 0.73% or ten cents.

Liz Grant, senior account executive at Sucden Financial, said, “Oil prices headed lower as did LME metals and despite intervention from Chinese authorities to calm investor fears, local equity markets are still weak having made fresh lows overnight.

“The USD remained fairly steady which prevented commodities from gaining any real traction to the upside.”

Finally, agricultural commodity futures were largely in positive territory over early trading calls stateside. CBOT corn (up 1.42%), wheat (up 0.69%), ICE cotton (up 1.06%), and CME live cattle (up 0.05%) futures headed higher. However, ICE cocoa (down 1.17%) futures slipped lower to $2,868 per metric tonne, well below their 20 and 100-day moving averages on the prospect of slugging global demand.