Crude oil drops

Oil prices end marginally higher for the week

Demand concerns and strong dollar took crude prices lower on Friday, 27 March, 2009. With Friday's drop, crude just ended marginally higher for the week.

On Friday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for May delivery closed at $52.38/barrel (lower by $1.96 or 3.6%) on the New York Mercantile Exchange. For the week, crude ended higher by 0.6%. For the month of February, crude prices had ended higher by 1.5%.

Oil prices had reached a high of $147 on 11 July, 2008 but have dropped almost 62% since then. Year to date, in 2009, crude prices are higher by 17.6%. On a yearly basis, crude prices are lower by 48%.

In the currency market on Friday, the dollar moved higher against most major rivals as a budget warning from Germany's finance minister pressured the euro.

The EIA had reported earlier during the week that crude inventories rose 3.3 million barrels last week (for the week ended 20 March, 2009), more than the 1.4 million barrels expected. At 356.6 million barrels, stocks are at the highest level since July 1993. U.S. refineries operated at 82% of their operable capacity last week, down slightly from a week ago. This also pressured crude prices on Friday.

Also at the Nymex on Friday, April reformulated gasoline fell 2.8% to $1.4879 a gallon and April heating oil rose 1.1% to $1.4813 a gallon.

Natural gas for April delivery gave up 0.2% to $3.947 per million British thermal units.

Crude prices had ended FY 2008 lower by 54%, the largest yearly loss since trading began at Nymex.