MARKET WATCH: Crude prices rebound in New York futures market
The front-month crude contract rose 0.9% May 28, ending a four-session decline in the New York market. Natural gas continued to fall, however, down 1.5%.
The US stock market “regained its footing” after the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank confirmed support for economic stimulus programs. The equity market’s recovery “was also supported by stronger consumer sentiment data and higher-than-expected home-sale prices, which combined to drive the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index up 0.6%,” said analysts in the Houston office of Raymond James & Associates Inc. “Energy helped lead the way,” they said, with the SIG Oil Exploration & Production Index and the Oil Service Index up 1.1% and 0.8%, respectively. However, crude and gas were down in early trading May 29, “taking a cue from the broader market,” Raymond James analysts said.
Ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are scheduled to meet May 31. “Comments by Saudi Arabia's leadership suggest that the nation is content with the demand side of the equation,” Raymond James analysts said. “Of course with Brent crude still above the $100/bbl benchmark, OPEC producers don't have much to complain about.”
Energy prices
The July contract for benchmark US light, sweet crudes regained 76¢ to $95.01/bbl May 28 after losing $2.56 over the four sessions on the New York Mercantile Exchange prior to the Memorial Day holiday. The August contract recouped 78¢ to $95.20/bbl. On the US spot market, West Texas Intermediate at Cushing, Okla., was up 76¢ to $95.01/bbl in step with the front-month futures contract.
Heating oil for June delivery took back 4.97¢ to $2.96/gal on NYMEX. Reformulated stock for oxygenate blending for the same month continued its advance, up 2.47¢ to $2.85/gal.
The June natural gas contract continued to retreat, falling 8.7¢ to $4.17/MMbtu on NYMEX. On the US spot market, gas at Henry Hub, La., inched up 0.8¢, also closing at a rounded $4.17/MMbtu.
In London, the July IPE contract for North Sea Brent increased $1.61 to $104.23/bbl. Gas oil for June jumped $17.25 to $875.75/tonne.
The average price for OPEC’s basket of 12 benchmark crudes was up $1.55 to $101.11/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.