Bloomberg reports that “crude oil fell Monday to the lowest in almost six years after OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla El-Badri said that there was about 1.5 million barrels a day of excess supply.”  

“Oil slipped 1 percent in New York, reversing an intraday gain of 1.8 percent that followed comments by El-Badri that OPEC is open to talks with outside producers and insufficient investment could push crude prices to $200. A blizzard that may dump 2 feet of snow from New York to Boston bolstered diesel, often traded as a proxy for heating oil.”  

“’El-Badri acknowledged that there’s about a 1.5 million- barrels-a-day surplus,’ Tim Evans, an energy analyst at Citi Futures Perspective in New York, said by phone. ‘It’s up to the market to decide whether that’s the critical factor or the possibility of OPEC-non-OPEC cooperation or the speculation that there could be $200 oil at some future date. It looks like the market decided.’”