MARKET WATCH: Oil prices climb; gas regains moderately

May 6, 2013

Oil prices continued climbing May 3 with crude up 1.7% in the New York futures market, pulled along by the strong performance in the equity market following a favorable jobs report.

Sam Fletcher

Oil prices continued climbing May 3 with crude up 1.7% in the New York futures market, pulled along by the strong performance in the equity market following a favorable jobs report.

Natural gas was up 0.4%, but energy stocks failed to keep pace with the overall market rally. The Oil Service Index and the SIG Oil Exploration & Production Index increased 2% and 2/1% respectively.

US Department of Labor officials reported the addition of 165,000 jobs in April and revised previous job additions upward to 332,000 in February and 138,000 in March. They said US unemployment is down to a 4-year low of 7.5%.

Energy prices

The June and July contracts for benchmark US light, sweet crudes each rose $1.62 to $95.61/bbl and $95.82/bbl, respectively, May 3 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On the US spot market, West Texas Intermediate at Cushing, Okla., also was up $1.62 to $95.61/bbl.

Heating oil for June delivery increased 2.89¢ to $2.88/gal on NYMEX. Reformulated stock for oxygenate blending for the same month escalated 4.48¢ to $2.83/bbl.

The June natural gas contract regained 1.6¢ to $4.04/MMbtu on NYMEX. On the US spot market, gas at Henry Hub, La., continued falling, however, down 26.5¢ to $3.96/MMbtu.

In London, the June IPE contract for North Sea Brent gained $1.34 to $104.19/bbl. Gas oil for May jumped $23.25 to $858/tonne.

The average price for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ basket of 12 benchmark crudes climbed by $2.50 to $101.47/bbl. So far this year, OPEC’s basket price has averaged $107.03/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.