Below-average temperatures will last through Feb. 18, the National Weather Service said yesterday. U.S. stockpiles of distillate fuel, including heating oil and diesel may have declined 2.88 million barrels in the week ended Feb. 2, according to the median of forecasts by 10 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.
``The colder weather has played a role,'' said Frederic Lasserre, the head of commodities research at Societe Generale in Paris. ``The market can break the $60-a-barrel mark, and even test $65 by the end of the first quarter.''
Crude oil for March delivery rose as much as $1.11 cents, or 1.9 percent, to $59.85 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was at $59.81 at 12:32 p.m. in London.
Brent crude oil for March settlement rose as much as $1.11 cents, or 1.9 percent, to $59.21 a barrel on London's ICE Futures exchange. The contract traded at $59.12 at 12:33 p.m. local time.
Temperatures fell to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 12 Celsius) in Boston overnight on Feb. 4-5, when 22 degrees is the normal low at this time of year, Michael Palmerino, a forecaster at Lexington, Massachusetts-based Meteorlogix LLC said yesterday.
``It will stay below normal and much below normal for the next week to 10 days,'' Palmerino said. ``It will take time for the weather pattern to change and for the cold air mass to retreat back into Canada.''
Enough to Last
Crude oil and heating oil supplies still seem ``more than adequate'' to last through the winter, said Gerard Burg, a minerals and energy economist at National Australia Bank Ltd. in Melbourne. Gasoline stockpiles are ``looking a bit tight'' before spring, when demand increases in the U.S., he said.
Gasoline inventories probably rose 1.78 million barrels in the week ended Feb. 2, the Bloomberg News survey showed. Crude-oil supplies jumped 1.2 million barrels, according to the median of responses.
``The consensus on gasoline is not that aggressive,'' said Societe Generale's Lasserre. ``We'll start the pre-season with significant stocks. There's less global appetite for oil among investors.''
Yesterday, oil fell 28 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $58.74 after rising to $59.95, the highest intraday price since Jan. 3. Prices are 9.5 percent lower than a year ago.
A price gain of 19 percent since Jan. 16 has been caused by renewed buying among investment funds, Lasserre said.
Nigerian Unrest
Unrest resurfaced in Nigeria, where gunmen kidnapped a Filipino working for Royal Dutch Shell Plc, killing a police escort during the attack, according to Agence-France Presse. Militant attacks since last February have slashed oil output by nearly a quarter in Nigeria, the sixth-biggest member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Leaders of the top oil unions said withdrawal of staff from the Niger Delta remains a possibility unless they receive assurances of safety from President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The Petroleum & Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, or Pengassan, and the National Union of Petroleum & Natural Gas Workers, or Nupeng, last week threatened to pull members from the Niger Delta today.
The unions never officially committed to the action. They were scheduled to meet Obasanjo in Abuja yesterday, said Lumumba Okugbawa, the Pengassan deputy general secretary. A decision on whether to withdraw oil workers from the delta would be made after the meeting, Okugbawa said.
Violence in the Nigeria Delta has intensified in the past year, with more than 200 people being kidnapped, the majority of them Nigerian.
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