Metals up again, oil down

Metals prices were on the rise again on Tuesday, with copper, nickel, and zinc all hitting new record highs on the day.

Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was as high as $7,230 per tonne during the day on news of a new miners’ strike, this time in Chile. Also contributing to the rise in price was the fact that inventories are down to just 2½ days at the current rate of global consumption. Later in the day, the price of copper slid back to $7,175, still a gain of 5.7 percent on the day.

In New York, meanwhile, copper trade on the COMEX was suspended for a quarter-hour when the benchmark copper contract was up to its 20-cent daily trading limit.

Nickel was up to $20,000 per tonne, a new record and a gain of 3.5 percent on the day. Helping the price up was the possibility of output disruptions at a facility in Canada where a labor contract expires in the middle of next month. There are also new predictions of a 10,000 tonne deficit in global supply this year.

Zinc added 3.6 percent on the day to $3,385 per tonne on a tight market.

Meanwhile, in precious metals, gold was up 1.4 percent to $629.80 per troy ounce.

Crude oil prices were up again early in the day due to new threats from Iran and data showing demand growing in China. However, prices slid after US President George W. Bush announced the suspension of oil deliveries to the Strategic Reserve in an effort to halt the rise in gasoline prices. Mr. Bush also asked the Environmental Protection Agency to relax pollution rules in order to ease gasoline shortages.

West Texas Intermediate crude for June delivery was up as high as $74.00 per barrel early in the session, but later was down $1 from Monday’s close to $72.33 per barrel. Meanwhile, June contract Brent crude was down 43 cents to $72.57 per barrel.

Nymex unleaded gasoline fell 6.4 cents to $2.11 per gallon even though the weekly US inventories report is expected to show stockpiles lower again.