West Texas prices surge but avoid record

Prices for West Texas Intermediate crude oil rose late in the day on Friday on a surge in heating oil and gasoline prices in advance of the Independence Day holiday in the United States, but it still closed lower than the record high price of $60.85 per barrel reached on Monday.

WTI contracts for August delivery was up $2.25 to $58.75 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while Brent August contracts on the International Petroleum Exchange gained $1.96 to $57.54 per barrel.

Nymex unleaded gasoline closed up 8.27 cents at $1.6485 per gallon, and heating oil gained 7.5 cents to $1.7111 per gallon.

Barclay’s has predicted that WTI will average around $60 per barrel in the third quarter, although the US energy department has said that concerns about tight supplies in the fourth quarter are not entirely grounded in reality.

Meanwhile, the president of OPEC said this week that the “ideal” price for WTI is $53 per gallon and that his organization would not take up the issue of increasing production quotas by another 500,000 barrels per day unless the price per barrel exceeds $60 per gallon again.

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