Crude drops for third straight day

Prices stay below $50

Oil prices fell for third straight day on Tuesday, 07 April, 2009. Prices continued to fall as traders anticipated that tomorrow's weekly inventory report by the energy department will show more than expected build up in crude inventories.

On Tuesday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for May delivery closed at $49.15/barrel (lower by $1.9 or 3.7%) on the New York Mercantile Exchange. During intra day trading, it dropped to a low of $48.89. Last week, crude ended higher by 0.3%.

Crude ended March trading up 10.9%. It rallied 11.3% in the first quarter. 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 68% since then. Year to date, in 2009, crude prices are higher by 8.3%. On a yearly basis, crude prices are lower by 50%.

Brent crude oil for May settlement dropped $1.02 (2%) to end the session at $51.22 a barrel on London's ICE Futures Europe exchange.

Traders expected today that tomorrow's inventory report might show that crude inventories climbed up by 1.5 million barrels last week.

Also at the Nymex on Tuesday, May-reformulated gasoline fell 1% to $1.4604 a gallon and May heating oil dropped 2% to $1.3903 a gallon.

May natural-gas futures dropped 4.6% to $3.56 per million British thermal units.

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

At the MCX, crude oil for March delivery closed at Rs 2,495/barrel, lower by Rs 27 (1.07%) against previous day's close. Natural gas for April delivery closed at Rs 181.1/mmbtu, lower by Rs 5.07/mmbtu (3.05%).