Crude drops for second straight day

Prices drop again as dollar remains strong

Crude prices fell for the second consecutive day at Nymex on Friday, 20 November, 2009. Prices registered losses due to the relatively strong dollar.

On Friday, crude-oil futures for light sweet crude for December delivery closed at $76.72/barrel (lower by $0.74 or 1%). Before Thursday, crude had gained more than 4% in the past three sessions. For the week, crude ended higher by 0.5%.

Oil prices had reached a high of $147 on 11 July, 2008 but have dropped almost 52% since then.

In the currency market on Friday, the dollar headed up against most of the major currencies. The dollar index, which measures the strength of dollar against basket of six other currencies, rose by almost 0.6% before settling with a 0.4% gain.

During the week, the EIA reported that crude inventories fell 900,000 barrels in the week ended 13 November, 2009 against an expectation of a modest increase. The weekly EIA data also showed U.S. crude imports fell 0.9% to 8.58 million barrels a day, and total petroleum demand rose 1% to 18.5 million barrels a day. Gasoline demand rose nearly 2% to 9.02 million barrels a day, returning to the level seen at the end of last month.

The report also detailed a decline of 1.7 million barrels in gasoline stockpiles and a drop of 300,000 barrels in distillates, which include heating oil and diesel.

Among other energy products, December gasoline was rose 0.6% to $1.9692 a gallon, and December heating oil dropped 1% to $1.9756 a gallon.

Also on Friday, December natural gas rose 1.9% to $4.424 per million British thermal units.

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