Crude tumbles

Prices end substantially lower on consumer data

Crude prices ended lower on Friday, 14 August, 2009. Prices tumbled on Friday as the dollar rose and survey showed that consumer sentiment once again dropped in US fuelling recessionary worries.

On Friday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for September delivery closed at $67.51/barrel (lower by $3.01 or 4.3%). During intra day trading, crude fell to an intra day low of $67.12/barrel. For the week, crude ended lower by 4.8%.

For the month of July, 2009, crude ended lower by a marginal 0.6%. For the second quarter, crude ended higher by 40%. Crude prices had rallied 11.3% in the first quarter of 2009.

Oil prices had reached a high of $147 on 11 July, 2008 but have dropped almost 44% since then. Year to date, in 2009, crude prices are higher by 44%.

In the currency market on Friday, the dollar index which weighs the value of dollar against a basket of six other currencies, rose by 0.5%.

The Reuters/University of Michigan index reported on Friday that U.S. consumer sentiment index unexpectedly declined in early August to 63.2 from 66.0 in July, 2009.

The Labor Department reported on Friday that the consumer price index was down 2.1% on a year-over-year basis in the sharpest annual decline since 1950. However, the core CPI is up 1.5% over the past year.

EIA reported earlier during the week that crude supplies rose by 2.5 million barrels to stand at 352.0 million barrels during the week ended 7, August, 2009. That was higher than the 1.2 million barrels expected. The report also showed that gasoline stocks fell by 1 million barrels and distillate inventories rose by 800,000 barrels last week.

In the latest report, The International Energy Agency revised up its global oil-demand forecasts for 2009 and 2010 by 190,000 barrels a day and 70,000 barrels a day respectively, citing a stronger outlook for Asia for both years.

Also at the Nymex on Friday, September reformulated gasoline fell 8.12 cents, or 4%, to end at $1.9380 a gallon and September heating oil dropped 6.18 cents to finish at $1.8410 a gallon.

September natural-gas futures fell 9.80 cents, or 3%, to end at $3.238 per million British thermal units.

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