Business | Oil & Gas
Oil prices jump nearly $3 after rise in gas futures
Oil prices jumped almost $3 a barrel on Friday, erasing losses from the previous session after a rally in gasoline futures and a drop on Wall Street drew investors back into energy markets.
- AP
- Published: 00:04 August 2, 2008
New York: Oil prices jumped almost $3 a barrel on Friday, erasing losses from the previous session after a rally in gasoline futures and a drop on Wall Street drew investors back into energy markets.
Light, sweet crude rose $2.87, or 2.31 per cent, to $126.95 a barrel in late morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange after earlier rising to $128.60, its highest level in nine sessions. Prices fell $2.69 Thursday, and are still down 13 per cent from the contract's record high above $147 reached last month.
In London, September Brent crude rose $2.03 at $126.01 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
Oil soared apparently after a surprise spike in gasoline futures energised oil markets, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Illinois. Unexplained jumps in gasoline futures usually suggest that a refinery somewhere is experiencing a slowdown in operations, perhaps from malfunctioning equipment, he said.
"Gasoline seems to leading the energy complex today. It's the strongest thing out there," Ritterbusch said.
Gasoline for September delivery rose 9.5 cents, or 3.09 per cent, to $3.1659 a gallon on the Nymex.
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Oil was also getting a boost as stocks retreated on news that jobs fell for the seventh straight month and that General Motors had its third-worst quarterly loss ever.
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