Crude Oil futures took a beating Thursday as investors stayed away from further investments after seeing the rising strength of the U.S. dollar, among other indicators.
Light, sweet crude oil futures for December delivery traded $82.05 a barrel at 0710 GMT on the New York Mercantile Exchange, showing a dip of 49 cents in the Globex electronic session. Brent crude for delivery in December traded at $83.23 a barrel on London's ICE Futures exchange, reflecting a slump of 37 cents.
The sag came after U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner expressed little intentions of further slump in the dollar value, especially with respect to the euro and yen. Investors were encouraged to reinvest in the greenback thus causing a drop in oil futures as both commodities generally trade inversely proportional to each other.
A brief respite came from China with reports that its refinery runs in September gained 3.9% from the previous month, closing at 34.9 million metric tons. The raise was temporary as the dollar data adversely affected the crude.
Prices also sludge because of unimpressive weekly petroleum inventories data, which reflected an increase of 700,000 barrels in the commercial crude-oil stockpiles for the week ended Oct. 15, and an unexpected gain of 1.2 million barrels in gasoline inventories.
Nymex reformulated gasoline blendstock for November dropped 96 points to trade at 207.30 cents a gallon and heating oil for November delivery traded at 224.40 cents, showing a drop of 108 points. ICE gasoil for November delivery traded at $706.50 a metric ton, up 50 cents from the previous settlement.
