World oil prices pushed upwards on Thursday as the market focus remained on United States refineries, many of which are struggling to restart production after recent hurricanes in the US Gulf of Mexico.
New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in November, added seven cents to $66,42 per barrel in electronic trading.
In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude for November delivery also gained seven cents to $64 per barrel.
”Refinery recovery looks likely to be slow,” said Victor Shum, an analyst with US energy consultancy Purvin and Gertz in Singapore.
US inventories data came in better than expected on Wednesday but traders remained concerned about refineries knocked offline following Hurricane Rita at the weekend, less than a month after Katrina.
”Even though the [US] inventory report … showed rather large gains in gasoline [petrol] stocks, that was ignored by the market,” Shum said.
With the northern-hemisphere winter season fast approaching, demand for heating fuel is likely to build and the refineries need to get back into operation, he added.
”Going forward, the tight supply situation across the entire energy complex, including crude-oil production and refinery capacity, will really put a high [ceiling] on prices.”
The US Department of Energy reported a drop in crude-oil inventories of 2,4-million barrels, a sharper decline than the 1,5-million-barrel drawdown expected by analysts.
But gasoline reserves increased by 4,4-million barrels, against market expectations of a drop of two million barrels.
Distillates, used for heating and diesel fuel, fell by 500 000 barrels, not as bad as expectations of a decrease of two million barrels.
US refineries operated at 86,7% of capacity in the week to September 23, down from 90,8% the previous week, the Department of Energy added. — Sapa-AFP