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Oil Prices Fall Below 60 Dollars

Posted on: Saturday, 11 March 2006, 09:00 CST

Oil prices fall below 60 dollars

NEW YORK, March 10 (Xinhua) -- Crude oil prices fell below 60 dollars a barrel Friday amid steady supply.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in April, lost 51 cents to close at 59.96 dollars a barrel. Crude futures have fallen nearly 6 percent this week from last Friday's settlement price of 63.67 dollars.

In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude for April delivery fell 23 cents to 60.83 dollars a barrel.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, the heating oil shed 3.54 cents to settle at 1.6846 dollars a gallon. Gasoline slipped 3.2 cents to settle at 1.6881 dollars a gallon on Friday, while natural gas rose 4.5 cents to settle at 6.646 dollars per 1,000 cubic feet.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced Wednesday that its crude oil inventories rose by 6.8 million barrels to 335.1 million in the week to March 3, 10 percent higher than at the same stage one year ago, and are at their highest level since May 1999.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), who pumps about a third of the world's oil, reassured on Wednesday that there will be no change to the group's 28 million barrels per day ceiling that has been in place since July 2005, despite forecasts for lower demand in spring.

Traders are still concerned about the possibilities that Iran's oil exports would halt if the United Nations imposes Teheran an international sanction for its nuclear activities.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned Thursday that the U.S. military will take "appropriate" action to stop "Iranian forces infiltrating Iraq". Iran is OPEC's number-two producer behind Saudi Arabia, producing four million bpd of oil and exporting 2.4 million bpd.

Nigerian separatist guerrillas, who are holding three Western oil workers hostage, shot dead five government soldiers in a firefight in the Niger Delta, a military spokesman said Thursday.

In Nigeria, some 455,000 bpd of its oil production- about one- fifth of the country's daily output, or less than 1 percent of total global demand, is still shut after a series of militant attacks. Nigeria is Africa's leading oil producer and the fifth- biggest source of U.S. oil imports.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS

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