VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Asian share markets were broadly higher on Monday as the prospect of further policy stimulus in China and Europe whetted risk appetites while sending the euro skidding.

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.

The oil market has entered a new era with lower Chinese economic growth and booming U.S. shale output, making a return soon to high prices unlikely, the West's energy watchdog said on Friday.

European stocks fell back on Friday and U.S. stocks looked set to open flat after a mixed bag of euro zone growth numbers that showed France and Germany growing marginally but others like Italy still firmly in recession.

Asian shares slipped slightly on Thursday as investors looked to a run of Chinese economic indicators due later in the day, while Wall Street shares ended a five-day winning streak as falling oil prices hurt energy stocks.

Japanese stocks scaled seven-year highs on Wednesday on growing expectations Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will postpone a planned sales tax hike to avoid damaging a fragile recovery, and call a snap election to bolster his political standing.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi is making his first visits in years to fellow exporters Venezuela and Mexico, although tumbling oil prices are not the stated purpose of the trip, according to officials and sources.

There is no need to panic at the recent drop in oil prices, the secretary general of OPEC said on Wednesday, saying low prices would curb competing supplies and require the group to pump far more by the end of the decade.

Venezuela's 2015 budget will be based on a target oil price of $60 dollars per barrel, President Nicolas Maduro said on Friday night, but he repeated expectations that prices will recover.

Still haunted by its failed attempt to prevent a steep drop in oil prices by slashing production by almost three quarters in the 1980s, the world's top oil exporter Saudi Arabia is determined not to make the same mistake again.

Stocks on Wall Street tumbled in late selling on Monday as the technical picture soured for the S&P 500, while the U.S. dollar posted its worst day in a year after comments from Federal Reserve officials hinted at delays in expected interest rate hikes.

European stocks reversed early losses on Monday as airline shares gained after crude oil prices fell to near a four-year low, though broad dollar weakness and a jump in gold signaled investor concern over global economic health.

Saudi Arabia is quietly telling oil market participants that Riyadh is comfortable with markedly lower oil prices for an extended period, a sharp shift in policy that may be aimed at slowing the expansion of rival producers including those in the U.S. shale patch.

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” William Shakespeare wrote in “Romeo and Juliet”. But he was not working for the U.S. government and trying to define what constitutes condensate and natural gas liquids.

World oil prices are set to fall further, extending a months-long rout as Saudi Arabia is unlikely to make deep enough production cuts to erase a growing surplus of supply, according to Gary Ross, chief executive of PIRA Energy Group.