VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Global oil markets on Tuesday slumped for a fourth straight session as mounting worries about a supply glut pressured crude prices, which have fallen almost 10 percent this week to their lowest since spring 2009.

Arab OPEC producers expect global oil prices to rebound to between $70 and $80 a barrel by the end of next year as a global economic recovery revives demand, OPEC delegates said this week in the first indication of where the group expects oil markets to ‎stabilize in the medium term.

Some major U.S. airlines including Delta and Southwest are rushing to finance losing bets on oil and revamp fuel hedges as tumbling crude prices leave them with billions of dollars in losses, according to people familiar with the hedging schemes.

Sliding oil prices and a downbeat China factory survey weighed on Asian shares on Tuesday, while the ruble jumped against the dollar after Russia sharply increased its benchmark interest rate in a bid to halt a collapse in its currency.

Gold prices tumbled on Monday after Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected proposals to boost gold reserves in a referendum, joining the broad rout in commodities that sent oil prices to five-year lows and copper to four-year lows.

Shale stocks have been hard-hit as investors see margins all but evaporating following the slide in crude oil prices, but the U.S. shale energy boom is not over.

Oil prices, oil-related shares and oil-linked currencies all tumbled in Asia on Friday, in the wake of OPEC's decision to refrain from cutting output despite a huge oversupply.

A panel of national representatives reviewed OPEC's oil market outlook for 2015 this week, OPEC sources said, preparing the ground for a policy-setting meeting next week that will decide how to address a looming oversupply of crude.

Asian stocks dipped on Friday following fresh signs of slowing Chinese growth, with energy stocks depressed across the region as crude oil hovered near a four-year low in an oversupplied market.

More than a dozen oil producers have joined to lobby the federal government to reverse the 40-year-old ban on U.S. crude exports, a move that supporters say would create jobs and keep the energy boom alive, a spokesman for one of the companies and a lobbyist for another one said on Friday.

U.S. stocks ended flat in a volatile session on Thursday as energy stocks rebounded and investors bought beaten-down shares, especially small caps.

China's steel consumption dropped this year for the first time since at least 2000 due to slower economic growth, leading to a surplus of iron ore in the country and a more than 40 percent plunge in prices of the steelmaking raw material.

To capitalize on a flood of domestic and Canadian crude into the U.S. Gulf Coast, logistics giant Kinder Morgan Energy Partners is spending more than $1.5 billion in Houston to build the most flexible oil and fuel transport hub in the country.

A robust dollar swept to a 14-month high on Tuesday as investors tweaked bets on an early hike in U.S. interest rates, burdening oil, gold and stocks in the energy majors. As the dollar broke to a six-year peak on the yen and a 14-month top against the euro, gold sagged to a three-month trough and Brent oil settled below the $100 a barrel mark.