WORLD> Asia-Pacific
|
WORLD> Asia-Pacific
|
|
Oil extends decline, drops below $128
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-23 16:30 "Clearly, there's not a lot of price-supporting news in the market, and what was there has been diminished now with Hurricane Dolly," said Mark Pervan, a senior commodities strategist with ANZ Bank in Melbourne. "This market's still fundamentally quite strong -- it's just that we've seen prices coming off from over-inflated levels. The market's letting steam out," Pervan said. "There's genuine reason to be taking profits in this market with the weak US demand numbers." Crude oil inventories were expected to drop by 1.9 million barrels in the US Energy Information Administration's weekly petroleum supply report, according to the average of analysts' estimates in a survey by energy research firm Platts. The survey also showed that analysts projected gasoline stocks to rise by 500,000 barrels. "I suspect we'll see another rise in gasoline stocks, highlighting again that demand is certainly weak," Pervan said. In its weekly pump spending survey, MasterCard found US gasoline demand dropped last week for the thirteenth week in a row. Demand fell 3.3 percent compared with the same week a year earlier, according to the survey. Since the start of 2008, gasoline demand is down 2.2 percent. In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures lost 1.82 cents to $3.66 a gallon (3.8 liters) while gasoline prices dropped 0.74 cent to $3.1396 a gallon. Natural gas prices added 0.7 cents to $10.074 per 1,000 cubic feet. September Brent crude fell 74 cents to $128.81 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London. |
