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from.– Oil Crisis...is
the world about to be shocked
Oil prices go above $58 a barrel on
supply fears
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Crude oil prices surged to a record high above $58 a barrel
on Friday, sustaining a rally built on strong demand for gasoline and
diesel and on concerns about refiners’ ability to keep up.
‘‘This is a pivotal point we’re at now,’’ said oil analyst John Kilduff
of Fimat USA in New York. ‘‘We’re one hiccup away from $60.’’
After climbing as high as $58.60 per barrel, light sweet crude for July
delivery settled at $58.47, an increase of $1.89 on the New York
Mercantile Exchange. That topped the exchange’s previous intraday high
of $58.28 set on April 4 and exceeded the previous closing high of
$57.27, set April 1.
While Nymex oil futures are more than 50 percent higher than a year ago,
they are still well below the inflationadjusted high above $90 a barrel
set in 1980.
‘‘The problem is not crude right now, there’s plenty of crude on the
market,’’ said oil analyst Jamal Qureshi of Washington-based energy
consultant PFC Energy, which estimates global oil demand is now slightly
above 82 million barrels a day.
Still, the relatively small amount of surplus oilproduction capacity is
an important factor underlying the jitters on energy markets, keeping
traders on edge about the possibility of output disruptions.
Gasoline futures climbed 4.93 cents to settle at $1.6471 per gallon on
Nymex, where heating oil futures rose 2.63 cents to $1.6518 per gallon.
OPEC failed to soothe the market earlier this week when it agreed to
raise its daily output quota to 28 million barrels a day because its
members had already been unofficially exceeding that level.
The Energy Department’s weekly petroleum report has helped push prices
higher in recent days because it showed that gasoline demand in the
United States has averaged nearly 9.5 million barrels a day over the
last four weeks. That’s 3 percent above the same period last year — a
pace that, if sustained, could push up gasoline prices, which now
average $2.13 a gallon nationwide.
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