Oil $59.22 Prices Rise by $1+ a Barrel, Nigerian fears
WASHINGTON — Oil prices rose by more than $1 a barrel Friday on worries that militants in Nigeria are preparing to launch simultaneous attacks in the country's oil-rich delta region.
A bomb hoax that led to the evacuation of nonessential workers from a huge BP PLC refinery may have contributed to the buying. Output at the 400,000 barrel a day Whiting, Ind., refinery was not affected, a spokesman said.
Light sweet crude for December delivery rose $1.26 to settle at $59.14 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where gasoline futures climbed 5.38 cents to settle at $1.5069 a gallon and heating oil gained 3.78 cents to settle at $1.6775 a gallon.
In London, December Brent crude on the ICE Futures exchange rose 49 cents to $58.36 a barrel.
While oil prices have retreated significantly from a summertime high above $78 a barrel, they have been trading in a range of around $57-$61 over the past month as traders look for demand clues in weather and economic forecasts and weigh them against OPEC's plans to curb supplies.
Until the end of the month there is unlikely to be much movement in the market, said Simon Wardell of Global Insight.
"It's going to be a fairly slow week with prices stuck between $55 and $60," Wardell said. "Really until the end of the month there will be a few clues but nothing major coming up that decides where we are at."
"A great deal is going to depend on the weather," said Cameron Hanover Inc. president Peter Beutel.
U.S. diplomats warned Friday that militants in Nigeria are planning a major new wave of attacks and kidnappings in the next few days that could include up to 20 simultaneous bombings across the country's oil-rich delta region.
The warning came in an e-mailed statement sent to American citizens from the U.S. Consulate in Nigeria's main city, Lagos, and a U.S. diplomat confirmed plans for fresh attacks were believed to be under way.
"The U.S. government has learned that as of late October 2006, a militant Niger Delta group may have finalized its plans for a unified attack against oil facilities in the Niger Delta region," the statement said.
Militants have taken dozens of oil workers working in the southern oil region hostage since the beginning of this year. The violence has pared about one quarter from Nigeria's normal 2.5 million barrel daily production.
Oil prices had fallen Wednesday and Thursday after weekly U.S. inventory data showed an increase in crude supplies. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said U.S. crude oil inventories rose by 2 million barrels to 334.3 million barrels in the last week.
That was largely due to crude imports bouncing back up by 599,000 barrels per day from the previous week, when imports dropped off significantly.
In other Nymex trading, natural gas futures climbed 7 cents to settle at $7.884 per 1,000 cubic feet.
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