The crude oil prices took the entire world by surprise in the year 2007 and the first quarter of 2008 by touching multi-year highs almost every month. Ever since the middle of 2008, we are seeing the crude oil prices losing strength, due to weakening US economy and also the economic woes of rest of the world.

The entire Europe, Asia and OPEC depend on US for good part of their livelihood in the form of exports of goods and services to US. And with tumbling US due to sub-prime crisis, exports of all these countries have been badly affected. So there is reduced demand for crude oil form across the world.

This has pushed the crude oil prices to multi year lows in the last few weeks, with prices going below the 40 dollars mark. At this level, the crude oil prices are far lower than the prices even two year ago and this would mean sharp drop in the earnings of OPEC and Russia. OPEC countries can only hope for better and quicker recovery in the US and Europe, and also Japan and China, so that crude oil prices can come to respectable 50-70 dollars level.

And when the whole world is talking of further drop in crude oil prices, we can expect it to remain at least range bound in the 30 to 50 dollars band, for at least a couple of months.