Oil slightly higher; metals decline
Crude oil prices were up slightly on Thursday as the big driving weekend of Memorial Day approaches at the end of the month. Prices at the pump are 75 cents per gallon higher than they were for last year’s holiday that marks the beginning of the summer driving season in the United States. The American Automobile Association has predicted that because of high gasoline prices, the rise in the number of Americans driving on the holiday will be the lowest in four years.
July contract Brent crude on the International Petroleum Exchange was up only 1 cent to $69.05 in late afternoon trade in London, but Brent traded in a wide range of $1.20 during the day. West Texas Intermediate crude June contracts were up 16 cents to $68.85 in early afternoon trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange, down more than 5 percent from its price at the beginning of the week.
Among precious metals, gold was down $8 after a sell-off late in the day, trading at $685.80/$683.60 per troy ounce.
Copper was also down on the day, losing $30 to $8,090 per tonne on the London Metal Exchange. The decline came after a report from the International Copper Study Group that showed a surplus of 52,000 tonnes of copper in February. Added to January’s surplus, the total surplus copper for the first two months of the year came to 117,000 tonnes, in contrast to a deficit of 55,000 tonnes for the same two months last year. Consumption for January and February this year was down 0.5 percent globally, according to the report, with Chinese consumption down 5.2 percent, EU usage down 4.7 percent, and US usage down 3.4 percent in the two months. Production was up in Australia, Congo, Peru, and Zambia, while it fell in Brazil, China, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, and the US. Copper production in Chile remained unchanged.
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