CRUDE oil prices for February delivery rose 7 cents to $34.50 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, weekend. Oil rose as high as $34.74 and fell as low as $34.12 during the seesaw session. Oil futures reached $35.20 during trading at the weekend, the highest intra-day price since March 17. Prices were 6.6 per cent higher than a year earlier.
Natural gas for February delivery rose 4.1 cents, or 0.7 per cent, to $6.37 per thousand cubic feet.
“It’s very surprising after the cold weather last week to see a build in distillates, but most people will probably assume it is coming in next week’s report,” said Peter Beutel, president of energy consultant, Cameron Hanover.
The EIA appeared to agree, saying in its weekly report: “The increase in distillate fuel inventories may be more surprising, in that the Northeast and mid-Atlantic did begin to feel the effects of cold weather last week.”
It added, “But the cold weather did not really hit until Tuesday evening (January 6), leaving little time to actually impact primary storage data for the week ending January 9.”
Price losses were limited by a large drop in crude stocks, already at their lowest level since autumn 1975.
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/business/b120012004.html