Oil Prices Gain on Winter Expectations

By GILLIAN WONG

SINGAPORE – Oil prices gained slightly Monday on expectations of higher demand for heating oil as the Northern Hemisphere winter approaches, stretching supplies strained by the slow recovery of U.S. crude production following back-to-back hurricanes.

Light, sweet crude for November delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose nine cents to $66.33 a barrel. The contract on Friday slipped 55 cents to settle at $66.24 a barrel.

November Brent futures at London’s International Petroleum Exchange traded at $63.63 a barrel, 15 cents higher than Friday’s settlement.

Concern is growing that damage caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita will hurt refineries’ efforts to gear up for the winter, the peak season for production of distillate stocks – fuels that include heating oil, jet fuel, kerosene and diesel.

“The longer term outlook is bullish for prices going into the fourth quarter, with heating oil demand now being in focus,” said Victor Shum, oil analyst at Texas-headquartered energy consultants Purvin & Gertz in Singapore.

“We will watch the weather again, but not the hurricane season so much as how cold the winter will get,” Shum said.

Analysts said much depended on how quickly oil and gas production facilities can come back online in the aftermath of the hurricanes, which shuttered more than 7 percent of annual U.S. oil production and more than 5 percent of annual natural gas production.

But recovery remains slow, with 98 percent of the area’s crude production still shut in and natural gas output down 79 percent, the U.S. Minerals Management Service said. The region usually produces 1.5 million barrels of crude oil a day. It wasn’t clear when output would fully recover.

“(With) a lot of questions concerning productive infrastructure in the Gulf still unanswered, it is difficult to envision any scenario right now that has prices retreating too far,” said Mike Fitzpatrick of Fimat USA Inc. “Barring a miracle, don’t look for much relief until spring.”

Crude-oil prices hit an all-time high of $70.85 briefly on Aug. 30, after Katrina touched down. They remain about 32 percent higher than a year ago, when Hurricane Ivan disrupted oil production and refining in the Gulf.

Meanwhile, November natural gas was flat at US$13.921 per million British thermal units. Last Thursday it settled at a record high of US$14.196.

Natural gas futures have risen about 18 percent since Katrina hit, and are about 74 percent higher than they were two months ago.