Swine flu concerns take crude lower

Crude manages to recover partly from intra day low

Crude oil ended substantially lower on Monday, 27 April, 2009. Prices fell as fears gripped the overall continent today that the current swine flu might hamper economic recovery from the ongoing global recession.

On Monday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for June delivery closed at $50.14/barrel (lower by $1.41 or 2.7%) on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier crude slipped by almost 7% around $48. Last week, crude ended higher by 2.4%.

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 68.8% since then. Year to date, in 2009, crude prices are higher by 9.6%. On a yearly basis, crude prices are lower by 53%.

The deadly swine-flu outbreak, originated in Mexico, has fueled fears of a repeat of the SARS epidemic that had ravaged Asia. In Mexico, more than 1,641 people have contracted the swine flu and 103 people have died.

Also at the Nymex on Monday, May reformulated gasoline fell 3.92 cents, or 2.7%, to $1.4083 a gallon and May heating oil dropped 4.54 cents, or 3.3%, to $1.3229 a gallon.

May natural-gas futures fell 4.4 cents, or 1.3%, to $3.253 per million British thermal units.

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