Crude sinks a bit

Prices pare most of their losses but still end lower

Crude oil ended lower for the first time in four sessions on Monday, 11 May, 2009. Prices fell today due to the rising dollar and also by the rising inventories of crude reported by energy department last week.

On Monday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for June delivery closed at $58.50/barrel (lower by $0.13 or 0.2%) on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier, it fell by more than 3% to $56.78. Last week, crude ended higher by 10.2%.

Crude ended April higher by 2.9%. Previously, March trading ended 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 61% since then. Year to date, in 2009, crude prices are higher by 23.6%. On a yearly basis, crude prices are lower by 40%.

In the currency market on Monday, the greenback regained some strength on Monday, and the dollar index, which weighs the strength of dollar against the basket of six other currencies was up 0.1% at $82.692.

Last week, EIA had reported that crude inventories increased by 600,000 barrels in the week ended 1 May, 2009. Gasoline inventories fell by 200,000 barrels. Market was expecting a buildup of more than 2 million barrels in crude inventories and a 750,000 increase in gasoline inventories. Crude inventories, meanwhile, still remained at the highest level since September 1990.

The report also showed that total petroleum demand over the past four weeks was 7.9% lower than a year ago. EIA also reported U.S. refineries increased their capacity utilization of 85.3%, up from 82.7% a week ago.

Also at the Nymex on Monday, June-reformulated gasoline fell 2.53 cents, or 1.5%, to $1.6802 a gallon, and June heating oil sank 1.75 cent, or 1.2%, to $1.5009 a gallon.

Natural gas for June delivery fell 2.2 cents, or 0.5%, to $4.289 per million British thermal units. The contract for natural gas rallied 21.6% last week.

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

At the MCX, crude oil for May delivery closed at Rs 2,875/barrel, higher by Rs 18 (0.63%) against previous day's close. Natural gas for May delivery closed at Rs 212.9/mmbtu, higher by Rs 3.1/mmbtu (1.5%).