Oil trades below $70 per barrel

Agencies
Posted: Thursday, Jul 02, 2009 at 1025 hrs IST
Updated: Thursday, Jul 02, 2009 at 1025 hrs IST

Font Size

Feedback

Discuss

Oil hovers below $79 after 3-day slide Oil spikes to USD 81.26 a barrel Oil eases to USD 78.65 a barrel Oil tops $80, highest since Oct 14, 2008

Singapore: Oil prices recovered modestly but remained below USD 70 in Asian trade after overnight losses on US energy demand concerns, analysts said.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for August delivery was 14 cents firmer at USD 69.45.

Brent North Sea crude for August delivery rose 10 cents to USD 68.89 a barrel.

Crude fell at the close of US trading yesterday as investors focused on weak American gasoline demand indicated by the latest government data which showed petrol stocks rising by 2.3 million barrels in the week ending June 26.

Distillates, which include diesel and heating fuel, increased by 2.9 million barrels in the same period, the data released by the US Department of Energy Wednesday showed.

Gasoline demand traditionally increases at this time of the year when Americans take to the roads for their summer holidays but the recession that began late last year is still taking a toll on US consumers, analysts said.

"Product demand is simply awful. Products built more than expected, and the expectations were already bearish," said Hussein Allidina of Morgan Stanley Research.

Going forward, the direction of crude prices will continue to be heavily influenced by the state of the global economy, especially that of the United States, the world's biggest energy user, analysts said.

Post Comments

Comments: (Limit 3,000 characters)

Name		Message
Email ID
Subject

TERMS OF USE:
The views, opinions and comments posted are your, and are not endorsed by this website. You shall be solely responsible for the comment posted here. The website reserves the right to delete, reject, or otherwise remove any views, opinions and comments posted or part thereof. You shall ensure that the comment is not inflammatory, abusive, derogatory, defamatory &/or obscene, or contain pornographic matter and/or does not constitute hate mail, or violate privacy of any person (s) or breach confidentiality or otherwise is illegal, immoral or contrary to public policy. Nor should it contain anything infringing copyright &/or intellectual property rights of any person(s).

I agree to the terms of use.