Crude ends below $79

Prices drop due to the rebounding dollar

Crude prices ended lower at Nymex on Monday, 26 October, 2009. Prices fell due to the rebounding dollar.

On Monday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for December delivery closed at $78.68/barrel (lower by $1.82 or 2.3%). Earlier during the day, it rose to a high of $81.59. Last week, crude ended higher by 3.4%. In the past two weeks, crude has climbed up by almost 20%.

For the month of September, 2009, crude ended higher by a marginal 0.9%. For the third quarter, crude ended higher by just 1%. Crude prices had rallied 40% and 11.3% in the second and first quarter of 2009 respectively.

Oil prices had reached a high of $147 on 11 July, 2008 but have dropped almost 58% since then. Year to date, in 2009, crude prices are higher by 57%.

In the currency market on Monday, the dollar index, which calculates the strength of the dollar against a basket of six other currencies rose by almost 0.6%. Last week, it had dropped to fourteen month lows.

Among other energy related products, November heating oil fell 4 cents, or 2%, to $2.0335 a gallon and November reformulated gasoline lost a penny, or 0.4%, to $2.0338 a gallon.

Also on Monday, natural gas fell 27 cents, or 5.7%, to $4.513 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 November delivery closed lower by Rs 23 (0.61%) at Rs 3,701/barrel. Natural gas for October delivery closed lower by Rs 10.6 (4.7%) at Rs 212.4/mmbtu.