MARKET WATCH: Oil, gas prices decline in uncertain market
Oil and stock prices were down Nov. 26 with markets pessimistic over the apparent lack of progress on a fiscal budget in Washington, DC. Natural gas fell 4% on milder weather forecasts.
Oil prices continued to retreat in early trading Nov. 27 despite a report the US consumer confidence index rose to 73.7 in November—its highest level since February 2008—from 73.1 in October. The number of new jobs also was up in August, September, and October, officials said.
However, traders still aren’t sure that will translate into increased demand for oil.
“As anticipated, the eruption of hostilities between Israel and Hamas did stem the liquidations of the previous 4 weeks. Net speculative length rose by a not particularly inspiring 2.6 million bbl,” said Marc Ground at Standard New York Securities Inc., the Standard Bank Group, about last week’s trading.
Energy prices
The January contract for benchmark US sweet, light crudes declined 54¢ to $87.74/bbl Nov. 26 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The February contract decreased 53¢ to $88.37/bbl. West Texas Intermediate at Cushing, Okla., increased to $87.74/bbl from $87.38/bbl on Nov. 21, the last day the US spot markets were open.
Heating oil for December delivery dropped 3.06¢ to $3.05/gal on NYMEX. Reformulated stock for oxygenate blending for the same month was down 1.76¢ to $2.73/gal.
The December natural gas contract fell 17.1¢ to $3.73/MMbtu on NYMEX. On the US spot market, gas at Henry Hub, La., increased to $3.77/MMbtu from $3.68/MMbtu Nov. 21.
In London, the January IPE contract for North Sea Brent retreated 46¢ to $110.92/bbl. Gas oil for December lost $3.75 to $948/tonne.
The average price for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ basket of 12 benchmark crudes was down 40¢ to $108.48/bbl.
Contact Sam Fletcher at [email protected].
Sam Fletcher | Senior Writer
I'm third-generation blue-collar oil field worker, born in the great East Texas Field and completed high school in the Permian Basin of West Texas where I spent a couple of summers hustling jugs and loading shot holes on seismic crews. My family was oil field trash back when it was an insult instead of a brag on a bumper sticker. I enlisted in the US Army in 1961-1964 looking for a way out of a life of stoop-labor in the oil patch. I didn't succeed then, but a few years later when they passed a new GI Bill for Vietnam veterans, they backdated it to cover my period of enlistment and finally gave me the means to attend college. I'd wanted a career in journalism since my junior year in high school when I was editor of the school newspaper. I financed my college education with the GI bill, parttime work, and a few scholarships and earned a bachelor's degree and later a master's degree in mass communication at Texas Tech University. I worked some years on Texas daily newspapers and even taught journalism a couple of semesters at a junior college in San Antonio before joining the metropolitan Houston Post in 1973. In 1977 I became the energy reporter for the paper, primarily because I was the only writer who'd ever broke a sweat in sight of an oil rig. I covered the oil patch through its biggest boom in the 1970s, its worst depression in the 1980s, and its subsequent rise from the ashes as the industry reinvented itself yet again. When the Post folded in 1995, I made the switch to oil industry publications. At the start of the new century, I joined the Oil & Gas Journal, long the "Bible" of the oil industry. I've been writing about the oil and gas industry's successes and setbacks for a long time, and I've loved every minute of it.
