Oil prices generally continued a relatively slow climb Apr. 22 with front-month crude up 0.9% in the New York futures market and North Sea Brent closing above $100/bbl.
Marc Ground at Standard New York Securities Inc., the Standard Bank Group, said Apr. 23, “After flirting with the $100/bbl resistance level overnight, Brent lost the battle during Asian trading hours, as a weak Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp. flash manufacturing purchasing manager's index reinforced concerns raised by last week’s disappointing gross domestic product number.”
He said, the market might be anxious regarding what he calls the “so-called soft landing, for China’s economy. The first quarter downturn has perhaps got many thinking that further downside is in the offing.”
Energy prices
The May contract for benchmark US sweet, light crudes rose 75¢ to $88.76/bbl Apr. 22 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The June contract gained 92¢ to $89.19/bbl. On the US spot market, West Texas Intermediate at Cushing, Okla., also was up 75¢ to $88.76/bbl.
Heating oil for May delivery increased 2.18¢ to $2.81/gal on NYMEX. Reformulated stock for oxygenate blending for the same month dipped 0.3¢ but closed essentially unchanged at a rounded $2.77/gal/
The May natural gas contract fell 14.1¢ to $4.27/MMbtu on NYMEX. On the US spot market, gas at Henry Hub, La., was down 4.5¢ to $4.23/MMbtu.
In London, the June IPE contract for Brent traded as high as $101.04/bbl before closing at $100.39/bbl, up 74¢ for the day. Gas oil for May increased $4.25 to $836.75/tonne.
The average price for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ basket of 12 benchmark crudes advanced 35¢ to $97.75/bbl.
Contact Sam Fletcher at [email protected]
About the Author
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.