Crude manages to climb up

Prices go up after last week's steep fall

Crude prices managed to end higher at Nymex on Monday, 28 September, 2009. But dollar's movement kept the gains under control.

On Friday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for November delivery closed at $66.84/barrel (higher by $0.82 or 1.2%). Last week, crude ended lower by 8%.

For the month of August, 2009, crude ended higher by a marginal 0.7%. 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 64% since then. Year to date, in 2009, crude prices are higher by 42%.

In the currency market on Friday, the dollar remained extremely volatile. The dollar index, which measures the strength of dollar against a basket of other currencies, rose by almost 1.5% earlier during the day but then erased most of its gains.

Among other energy products on Friday, October reformulated gasoline rose 2 cents, or 1.2%, to $1.64 a gallon and October heating oil gained 2 cents, or 1.2%, to $1.69 a gallon.

Also on Friday, natural gas for October delivery fell 25 cents, or 6%, to $3.73 per million British thermal units. The October contract expired today. The new front-month November contract fell 11.8 cents to finish at $4.83 Btus.

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