Crude continues rise on Nymex

Crude oil prices have quietly advanced to within $4 of its historic high this week as concerns arose over the possibility of short supplies later in the year.

These worries have not been deterred by the fact that this week’s US inventory figures show that stockpiles are near six-year highs and gasoline inventories increased on the week on refinery output that is 96.2 percent of capacity and crude oil inventories were up on imports of 10.7 million barrels a day.

The biggest worries came over distillates such as jet and diesel fuel, where inventories only grew slightly while demand increased by 5 percent over last year’s demand in the same period.

Gasoline demand, by contrast, was only 1 percent higher than last year, possibly a function of current high pump prices. In mid-day trading in New York on Friday, Nymex West Texas Intermediate had gained 87 cents for the day to $54.50 per barrel, an increase of 5.4 percent for the week.

Brent crude oil saw an 6.2 percent increase for the week to $53.55 per barrel. Prices for metals were also higher this week. Gold gained 0.9 percent on the week to $423.40, copper was up over six percent for the week to $3,270 per tonne, and aluminium prices were up 2.5 percent this week to $1,791 per tonne.

Discuss this in the Finance Markets forums

Story link: Crude continues rise on Nymex