Vegetable Oil Prices Are Seen Near Bottom on Energy Use

Palm oil and other vegetable oils may rebound from current “very low” price levels as a recent slide prompts demand for use in energy and food, industry researcher Oil World wrote.

Low palm-oil prices in Indonesia have prompted rising use by the energy industry, while Argentina’s biodiesel exports were “unusually high” in July and the first half of August, the Hamburg-based researcher wrote in an e-mailed report.

Palm oil, soybean oil and rapeseed oil can be used as a feedstock to make biodiesel or as fuel to fire power plants. Soybean oil futures fell 24 percent in Chicago in the past 12 months, touching a five-year low of $0.331 a pound yesterday, amid an outlook for record U.S. soybean production.

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