OSLO, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Norway's multinational oil and gas company Equinor sees oil prices unaffected by recent happenings in the Middle East when Iran seized a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, online newspaper E24 reported Thursday.
Surplus of oil in the market and slower global growth are main reasons that the prices remain unchanged, the company's CFO Lars Christian Bacher said.
Historically, this development is a bit unusual, as these types of events had earlier led to an increase in oil prices, he added.
There is currently greater uncertainty about the demand for oil than about the supply of it, Bacher said.
"At the same time, we see a slower growth in the global economy, a lower growth in Europe, there is uncertainty linked to Brexit and so on, which then leads to a risk to the demand side. And that is why we see the prices the way they are now," he said.
Equinor predicts that oil prices will rise in the long run, as production will continue to fall on many aging oil fields around the world, and the industry has invested less in new fields in recent years than before the fall in oil prices between 2014 and 2016, the report said.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on Friday announced that it had seized the British oil tanker Stena Impero in the Strait of Hormuz, saying that "the British vessel was captured for failing to respect the international maritime rules while passing through the Strait of Hormuz."
