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Asian crude prices dip below $47 a barrel
Singapore: Oil futures dipped below the $47 per barrel mark in Asia after the latest US petroleum inventories data showed another impressive build up in crude stocks.

The US Department of Energy's midweek inventory data reported US crude oil inventories rose to 334 million barrels in the week ending May 13 from the previous week - the 13th increase in the past 14 weeks - up 34 million barrels from a year ago.

The total crude inventory figure was the highest since May 1999, Dow Jones Newswires said. In mid-morning trades, light, sweet crude for June fell 35 cents to $46.90 a barrel in after-hours trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The contract had fallen $1.72 overnight following the release of the stocks report from the US Energy Department. In Asia, gasoline fell to $1.4073 a gallon while heating oil slumped to $1.3535 a gallon.
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Venezuela to oppose output hike at OPEC meet
Caracas: Venezuela will oppose a production increase at OPEC's next meeting in mid-June, Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez has said.

"The market is well supplied, we are not in agreement with putting more barrels on the market," Ramirez told reporters.

Venezuela, the world's fifth largest oil exporter and a major supplier of crude to the United states, consistently argues in favor of defending high prices within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez claims current oil prices are fair arguing that oil-producing nations like his own provided cheap oil to developing nations for decades.

Venezuela's heavy crude oil was fetching less than $8 per barrel when Chavez took office in 1999.
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EU seeks emergency talks with China on textile imports
New Delhi: The European Union has called for emergency talks with China over cheap textile imports, seeking to restrict surging textile exports which are threatening European producers.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said import limits would be imposed until the end of the year if China fails to take action. There's been an explosion of Chinese textile imports into Europe since global trade quotas were abolished at the beginning of the year.
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US to restrict Chinese clothing imports
Washington: The United States has said that it will impose new limits on imports of clothing from China, following complaints that a surge of Chinese apparel to the United States was hurting US companies.

The administration will restrict a number of items that China can ship to the United States.
But American retailers are concerned that the move will raise the prices of these goods for US consumers.

Though China has called US and European efforts to curb the flow of Chinese textiles to their markets as unfair, a US government committee, led by the Commerce Department, found that certain categories of imports threatened to disrupt the US market.

In an earlier sign of the trade tensions between the two countries, the administration last week said it was re-imposing quotas on three categories of clothing imports from China - cotton trousers, cotton knit shirts and underwear.

US's trade deficit with China set a record last year of $162 billion.
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