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Oil Prices Slip Below $60 a Barrel
Friday October 27, 8:37 am ET
Oil Prices Fall Back Under $60 a Barrel, Extending the Previous Day's Decline


LONDON (AP) -- Crude oil futures retreated back under $60 a barrel Friday as traders took profits for a second day after a runup earlier in the week.
Light, sweet crude for December on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 48 cents to $59.88 a barrel in electronic trading by midday in Europe. Brent crude fell 42 cents to $60.35 a barrel at London's ICE Futures exchange.

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Norway's state-controlled oil company Statoil ASA also announced Friday that the 200,000 barrel per day Snorre A and Vigdis offshore oil platforms have been restarted after defective lifeboats were upgraded to meet Norwegian safety standards.

Statoil had been forced to shut down Snorre A and the linked Vigdis platform on Oct. 13 because an industry study found defects in lifeboats essential to evacuating crew in a crisis.

Traders said prices could climb with winter demand for heating oil and natural gas expected to buoy energy prices in coming months. Cold weather increases demand for both natural gas and heating oil. Heating oil is most prevalent in the U.S. Northeast, where nearly one-third of households use it as their primary heating fuel.

But November heating oil slipped 1.5 cents to $1.6852 a gallon, while unleaded gasoline rose 0.13 cent to $1.5650 per gallon. Natural gas dropped 2.2 cents to $7.459 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Tom Bentz, a trader at BNP Paribas in New York, said that movement of money from the front-month contracts to later months was partly behind the crude drop Thursday, when the contract fell $1.04 a barrel.

It had settled Wednesday at $61.40 a barrel, the highest close since Sept. 29, after the U.S. Department of Energy said inventories unexpectedly shrunk last week amid the highest demand for oil products since last December.

Adding to support for crude oil prices is a growing view the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will implement more of the 1.2 million barrels of output cuts announced last week than previously thought.





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