Friday's gains erase weekly losses for crude

Crude ends marginally lower in July

Crude prices ended substantially higher on Friday, 31 July, 2009. Prices rose as the dollar weakened following the GDP numbers for second quarter which showed that US economy contracted at a smaller pace than expected.

On Friday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for September delivery closed at $69.45/barrel (higher by $2.51 or 3.7%). For the week, crude ended higher by 2.1%.

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 47% since then. Year to date, in 2009, crude prices are higher by 45.4%.

In the currency market on Friday, the dollar index, a six-currency gauge of the greenback's value, fell by almost 0.9%.

The advance Q2 GDP report showed the economy contracted at an annualized rate of -1%, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of decline. That was much improved from a downwardly revised -6.4% (from -5.5%) in the first quarter and it was also better than the expected -1.5% decline.

Also at the Nymex on Friday, August reformulated gasoline rose 5.37 cents, or 2.7%, to $2.0448 a gallon and August heating oil added 2.51 cents, or 1.4%, to $1.7938 a gallon.

September natural-gas futures fell 9 cents, or 2.4%, to $3.653 per million British thermal units. Natural gas has fallen 4.7% this month.

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