Crude slips

Prices drop for first time in five sessions

Crude oil ended lower for the first time in five sessions on Tuesday, 05 May, 2009. Prices fell today as traders anticipated that tomorrow's inventory report by energy department will show rise in crude inventories for last week.

On Tuesday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for June delivery closed at $53.84/barrel (lower by $0.63 or 1.2%) on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Last week, crude ended higher by 3.2%.

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 15.1%. On a yearly basis, crude prices are lower by 48%.

Market is expecting a build up of more than 2 million barrels of crude for last week. On Tuesday, according to prepared remarks for his Joint Economic Committee testimony, Fed Chairman Bernanke stated that the U.S. economy is moving to resume growth later this year. However, Bernanke also stated that further sizable job losses are likely and inflation will remain low.

Also at the Nymex on Tuesday, June reformulated gasoline fell 1.38 cents, or 0.9%, to $1.5722 a gallon and June heating oil lost 0.83 cent, or 0.6%, to $1.4262 a gallon.

Natural gas for June delivery slid 11 cents, or 3%, to $3.615 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 May delivery closed at Rs 2,676/barrel, lower by Rs 2 (0.07%) against previous day's close. Natural gas for May delivery closed at Rs 178.4/mmbtu, lower by Rs 6.2/mmbtu (3.3%).