Crude tumbles

Prices register marginal gains for the week

Oil prices fell on Friday, 03 April, 2009. Prices fell as Friday's job loss data once again raised concerns about the overall health of the US economy questioning the demand for energy in the coming months. For the week, oil ended marginally higher.

On Friday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for May delivery closed at $52.51/barrel (lower by $0.13 or 0.2%) on the New York Mercantile Exchange. For the 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 63% since then. Year to date, in 2009, crude prices are higher by 20%. On a yearly basis, crude prices are lower by 50%.

On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the total number of jobs lost since the recession began climbed to 5.1 million. As per the report, U.S. nonfarm payrolls fell by 663,000 in March, while the unemployment rate jumped to a 26-year high 8.5% from 8.1%, as expected.

Earlier during the week, the energy department reported that crude inventories rose 2.8 million barrels, staying at the highest level since July 1993. Crude inventories, the delivery point for Nymex oil futures, fell 800,000 barrels to 30.9 million barrels.

The report also said that gasoline inventories increased 2.2 million barrels in the week ended 27 March, 2009. The EIA also reported an increase of 300,000 barrels in distillate stockpiles, which include diesel and heating oil.

EIA had also reported that total demand for petroleum demand over the last four-week period averaged 18.9 million barrels a day, down by 4.4% compared to the similar period last year. Among them, motor gasoline demand averaged 9 million barrels a day, down by 0.2% from a year ago, while distillate fuel demand slumped by 9.1%. U.S. refineries operated at 81.7% of their operable capacity last week, down from the 82% a week ago,

Also at the Nymex on Friday, May reformulated gasoline gained 2.26 cents, or 1.5%, to $1.4924 a gallon and May heating oil rose slightly to $1.446 a gallon.

May natural gas futures rose 0.5% to $3.801 per million British thermal units.

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