All time high for Crude

In the past two sessions, crude prices go up by almost $7

Crude prices rose by more than $3 once again on Monday, 05 May, 2008. Price rose due to supply problems once again emerging at Nigeria. The weak dollar also pushed up the crude price today. It touched a new high of $119.97/barrel today during intra day trading and closed a little short of $120/barrel for the day.

Crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for June delivery closed at $119.97/barrel (higher by $3.65/barrel or 3.1%) on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In the past two sessions, crude prices have gone up by almost $7. Before today, last Monday, 28 April, 2008, prices touched a historic high of $119.9/barrel. For the year, crude is up by 23.7% till date.

On the currency markets today, the U.S. dollar weakened even after a report from the Institute for Supply Management showed that nonmanufacturing sectors of the U.S. economy expanded during April after three months of contraction. The dollar index, which tracks the performance of the greenback against a basket of currencies, was down 0.4% to 73.19.

The ISM nonmanufacturing index rose to 52.0% from 49.6% in March. The increase was unexpected.

Nigeria's rebel group Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND, attacked a Shell oil flow station in the south of the country last weekend. Shell is a unit of Royal Dutch Shell. In recent months, MEND has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta.

June natural gas climbed 40 cents to end at $11.18 per million British thermal units.

Against this backdrop, June reformulated gasoline gained 8.65 cents to end at $3.0529 a gallon, while June heating oil rose 8.78 cents to finish at $3.3065 a gallon.

Crude had ended FY 2007 substantially higher by $35 or 57%. It was crude’s biggest yearly gain in five years.

At the MCX, crude oil for May delivery closed at Rs 4,857/barrel, higher by Rs 127 (2.7%) against previous day’s close. Natural gas for July delivery closed at Rs 454/mmbtu, higher by Rs 15.1/mmbtu (3.4%).