Low oil, natural gas and coal prices will continue to put downward fiscal pressure on states that rely on those resources to fund their budgets, ratings agency Fitch said on Thursday. While OPEC’s agreement to implement production quotas boosted oil prices this week, Fitch’s long-term base case price forecast remains $45 a barrel in 2017, $55 a barrel in 2018 and $65 a barrel in 2019, said Marcy Block, an analyst at Fitch. U.S. crude oil prices are hovering around $50 per barrel compared with over $100 a few years ago. “Commodity prices will continue to dampen energy states’ collection of severance taxes and related revenue sources, while personal income and sales tax collections will remain suppressed, prolonging fiscal pressure,” she said. Negative outlooks for Alaska, West Virginia and Oklahoma were unchanged due to the states’ […]